


The Supernatural Files: Unsolved

by PaperGirlInAPaperTown



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Be cool my bebies, Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural, Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural (Season 5), Demon!Shane, Demon!Shane AU, Gen, New chapter up soon, No Slash, Parallel Series, Protecting Ryan, coarse language, hidden identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2019-08-06 16:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16391066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperGirlInAPaperTown/pseuds/PaperGirlInAPaperTown
Summary: Based on the events of Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural Season 5, this fic will be a deep-dive investigation into the question (dramatic camera change): "If ghosts are real, why the Hell is one half of the ghoul-hunting dynamic duo so determined to convince the world otherwise?" Something else is going on behind the scenes. A sinister plot is afoot. And forces much stronger than the demonic Shane are determined to set it in motion.Join me as I twist quotes and (only slightly) remove them from context to show you what really happens on the other side during the Ghoul Boys' on-site investigations.Disclaimer: Shane Medej is not a demon. It's just fun to imagine he might be.





	1. Return to the Horrifying Winchester Mansion

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned in the description, this is a fic/series that will be added to each week (or whenever the boys upload), with each chapter being based on the events of each separate video. This is a highly misguided attempt to create an extended, interweaving narrative out of the stranger things that occur during these investigations (or are said by one Shane Medej). Given that I will be restricted by what happens in each video, and that I have literally no idea what's going to happen week to week, this could be a disaster.
> 
> Or it could be the greatest fluke known to humanity. 
> 
> Let's find out together, shall we?

"Enter."

Shane closed the solid oak door behind him with a sharp click and turned to face the room inside. Behind a desk at the far end of an enormous office, there sat a man twisted and bowed by age. The spectacles balanced on the end of his nose gave him a certain bureaucratic air, but Shane knew better than to be fooled by such an innocuous facade.

He always did detest visits to the embassy. Even more so when the Ambassador himself had summoned him, personally. In such cases, it was handy to have a collar he could loosen, preferably one in a garish floral print to suit the occasion. Shane approached the desk, already feeling suffocated by the stuffy heat of the room. The Ambassador's hand froze over the page on which he was writing. He looked up.

"Mr. Ambassador," Shane greeted. To his knowledge, the man didn't hand out his given name to anyone lower than his station. There was more power in anonymity, so the higher-ups believed.

“Mr. Medej,” the Ambassador replied, his voice like the crackle of dry, dead leaves.

“Now, now.” Shane lifted a wagging finger, the glint of a jest in his eye. “Mr. Medej was my father.”

“We both know that isn’t true,” said the Ambassador, entirely unamused. “I only use it since you  _insist_  on going by your mortal moniker.”

The Ambassador resumed writing, making Shane wait in a silence laden with the mild threat of something unknown. It was all part of his game; the cryptic summons sent by a shady messenger, the barely-hospitable car ride obscured by tinted windows, the complimentary water that only came sparkling… _the goddamn waiting_. It was like being stuck in line at the DMV. Suddenly, the Ambassador closed his heavy, law-style journal with a thud.

“I want a progress report, Mr. Medej.”

Shane shrugged. “Alright. Could have just dropped me a line or—“

“I gave you one year,” the Ambassador interrupted, “one year to try and shut down the operation run by that…” he curled his lip in a sneer, “… _content producer_.”

“Ryan. You mean Ryan Bergara.”

“Upon your request, I extended your assignment for another year. However, that wasn’t enough either. Now my sources tell me that this  _Bergara_  and his little  _team_  are trying to expose us for a fifth time. Is this true?”

Shane withheld his answer for a beat, a vain attempt to prolong the inevitable. “That would be a yes, Mr. Ambassador…Sir. He wants to go in for a, uh, another rodeo, as they say.” Time to loosen that collar.

“What exactly do you have to say for yourself?”

“Well, I mean it's not exactly easy, what you sent me out there to do. I tried to scare him off the trail many times but the guy’s insatiable. He’s like a chihuahua. A tiny, shivering chihuahua.” Shane smothered a snicker.

“He’s getting closer,” the Ambassador continued, quiet fury rolling off him in waves. “We even have reason to think he suspects that you are not the human you pretend to be.”

“Yeah sure he does," said Shane as he waved a hand through the air, "but so does literally everyone else. It’s kind of a running gag at this stage in the game. If you think about it, I’m hiding in plain sight. It’s genius!”

The Ambassador hissed a sigh as he propped his elbows up on his mahogany desk. He steepled his bony fingers and appraised Shane almost condescendingly. “Mr. Medej, how, pray tell, are you going to hide proof of the diabolic from Mr. Bergara when even this feeble flesh-sack is betraying you right now?”

With eyes widened in panic, Shane’s hand shot to the crown of his head to check his strategically mussed hair hadn't been blown askew. The Ambassador's thin lips spread in a self-satisfied smile.

"They're back, aren't they?"

While fixing his hair in its trademark unruly style, Shane felt them; two small, hard lumps protruding from the surface of his scalp. His brow flattened in a scowl.

“Oh, come on, you didn’t see anything.”

“No, but it has been what, two, three years since you left our dimension? You’re reaching your expiration date. I’m sure you'll endeavour to keep those hidden for now,” he said, gesturing to Shane’s head, “but you know you can't hide what you are forever."

“Pfft, it’s fine,” Shane insisted, perhaps overselling his state of nonchalance. “You’re making a mountain out of these little molehills. No one would be any the wiser unless they decided to, I don't know, give me a noogie or something, which isn’t a problem—Ryan can't reach that high.”

“You had better hope that’s the case. Even so, the truth will out sooner or later."

Shane clasped his hands together, as the man had brought up an excellent point. ”Indeed it will! Which, may I remind you, is why I'm out there in the first place. For everything seen, heard or felt, I disprove the evidence. Not to mention, I block the doorways opened by seances and manipulate that stupid spirit box to give off white noise. Or, I try. There’s like an eighty per cent success rate there. My point is, I’m all that's standing in the way of Ryan Bergara exposing the diabolic to an audience of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. I may not have succeeded like we planned, but I haven’t failed either.”

The Ambassador studied Shane with a narrowed, scrutinising gaze. “Do I detect a hint of pride, Mr. Medej?”

“In my lack of failure?”

“I mean in this life you appear to have cultivated for yourself; performing like a circus animal to receive validation from strangers.”

At this Shane couldn’t help but smirk. “Sir, I’ve always been a performer. I’m charming. Witty. Entertaining is what I do.”

The Ambassador stood suddenly and slammed his hands down on the desk. “You are too attached!” he roared, which was enough to make Shane flinch ever so slightly. “You are too attached to that producer, to his team, and to the very operation you as an emissary are supposed to be bringing down. I want you to screw your head on straight or so help me I will do it for you.” Shane swallowed and absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck, knowing the Ambassador meant the metaphor quite literally. “I want Bergara’s operation destroyed, and I want you back in your old position maintaining the Hell-loops of the damned. If not, there will be dire consequences for you and anything for which you’ve made the mistake of caring. Am I clear?”

Shane bowed his head and brought a hand to his stubbly chin. This had certainly made a mess of his plans since the last thing he wanted was to go back home. The life he had was a gift (stolen on the sly when no one was looking but a gift nonetheless). To live it was an experience both wild and unpredictable, and better in every way than an existence in purgatory. Mere existence without life was its own form of torture. And he knew a thing or two about the art of torture. But, where there was a will there was a way, and by golly, Shane was going to find a way to keep what he’d earned.

“Crystal,” said Shane.

“Good.” The Ambassador returned to his seat and picked up his pen. “You have ten weeks. Do not disappoint me.”

 

=/=

 

The production crew’s excursion to the labyrinthine Winchester House two weeks later became a high-wire balancing act. Shane had to walk the fine line of trying to feed Ryan’s hysteria enough that the investigation might be called off. At the same time, he had to maintain the skepticism that had earned him a cult following. That was difficult. Especially when they had a ghostly figure silently tailing them from room to room.

The spectral woman was petite in stature, dressed in late 17th century garb. Daywear to be precise. By reasonable deduction, Shane assumed their stalker was none other than the wretched Sarah Winchester herself. She clearly wanted to talk with him or had something urgent to say, but Shane had to ignore her, lest he gave the true nature of her presence away. 

“Something wrong?” TJ, their first assistant director asked when Shane had been caught staring off into supposedly empty space for the third time.

“Yeah, you look…peaky?” said Ryan, tilting his head in fascination and turning to Devon for a second opinion. “He looks peaky, doesn’t he?”

“Excuse me, would you like it if I pointed out whenever you looked like you were about to pass out?” said Shane incredulously. “Because we would never get anything done, I’ll tell you that.”

“Jeez, okay,”  Ryan replied, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “Just making sure you’re alright, but whatever, man.”

So much for not arousing suspicion.

“No, I’m good,” Shane amended. “In fact, I’m better than good. I’m stupendous.”

“Then do you mind grabbing those mics and helping me, please?” Mark asked, sparing no amount of exasperation as he hauled the rest of his camera equipment down the gloomy hall and into the alleged “seance room”. Mutterings of “Have to do everything myself…” bounced off the dusty floorboards in biting whispers. In the doorway opposite them, the ghost of Sarah Winchester stood watching the remainder of the group. Again, Shane willed her to understand that she couldn't have picked a less opportune moment to make her presence known…or had she? They were about to try and reach out to the other side after all, and any conversation would be, as Shane had explained to the Ambassador, hidden in plain sight. It just might work. As subtly as he could muster, he tilted his head in the direction of the “seance room”. Sarah nodded.

“I don’t mind at all. I’ll be right there,” Shane called to Mark. He stooped to pick up the microphones and their booms. Meanwhile, Ryan was staring at him, frowning.

“ _Are_  you okay?”

“I think the real question is: are you?” Shane deflected. “Tell me, Ry, what sort of vibe do you get from this place, huh?”

Ryan looked around at the moth-eaten carpets and irregular passages. His gaze passed straight through Sarah Winchester. “It still gives me the creeps.” He shrugged. “But I don’t  _feel_  like there’s anyone with us. Not right now, anyway. I think it’s all pretty much par for the course.”

_Oh, buddy, if only you knew._

Shane grinned. “Imagine how much better you’re going to feel sleeping alone in Sarah’s room tonight.”

“Oh, God.” The colour drained from Ryan’s face.  “Oh, God, don’t remind me.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. Shane fought the urge to the same. “You’re right. Let’s put a pin in it; we got some g-g-g-ghoooost whispering to do.”

“Dude, shut up.”

 

The idea was that, with the cameras rolling and a Ouija board between them, Ryan and Shane would attempt to contact the spirits who haunted the house. It was a dangerous game if one didn’t know the rules, but Shane’s presence alone had thus far prevented any conjurings. Only here, the seance could not have come at a better time. Sarah had grown desperate, clenching and unclenching her fists as the camera crew took their sweet time setting up. When at last everything was ready for their shot, they flicked out the lights and began rolling.

Ryan opened the way for a dialogue, and Shane agreed to each statement. In the corner, Sarah watched, waiting for her moment, though it wasn’t without visibly mounting irritation as Shane took a bite out of the Rice Krispie offering. What could he say? In another dimension, it was his job to torture unfortunate souls. Old habits die hard.

Ryan and Shane each threw their own invasive questions out into the void, though Shane had, admittedly, been avoiding one question in particular. Mostly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know its answer. But before the moment could pass, he looked over to where the spectral woman stood and asked, “Is there anything you would like us to know?”

_'Your friend is in grave danger.'_

Shane’s blood ran cold as he heard the cool but urgent voice of Sarah Winchester as if inside his head. ' _What_?  _Why is he in danger?'_ he asked without speaking this time.

_'I received a message from the Ambassador of the Infernal Regions. Your friend, it seems, has not been deterred from his project at all in the past two weeks. The Ambassador is concerned he is getting too close to the truth and is reaching the point of no return.'_

_'What the fuck…? If the Ambassador knew anything, he would have realised that Ryan’s probably the most skeptical he’s ever been. Besides, I still have eight weeks left on the clock, this is bullshit.'_

_'He seems to think otherwise. He says if you will not act soon, he will be forced to do so on your behalf. I was told to warn you.'_

_'Yeah? Well if you see him or his cronies again, tell him from me he’s a turd.'_

_'Tread lightly,'_ Sarah warned, _'otherwise you will make a powerful enemy.'_

Shane's eyes flicked over to the corner where Sarah was standing. Her face was solenm and pinched in a frown leaving no doubts as to her grim concern. _'No, I know that, I know,'_ Shane admitted. _'Granted I was headed that way regardless. Fuck. I have to think. I have to get Ryan out of here. What am I talking about? I’m not getting him out of here. He’s as stubborn as a mule. Wait. I’ve got it._ You _could protect him!'_

 _'Me?'_ Sarah drew back as if expecting an agent of the Devil himself to drag her away for even entertaining such a notion. _'How would I do that?'_

_'If the Ambassador comes knocking, you’d be the first to know because Ryan is sleeping in your room tonight—sorry in advance, that is really gonna suck for you. But that’s your domain. Nothing from our world can harm him there without your say so. I need you to do this for me, please.'_

_'Do you realise helping you could be at the risk of my own peril?'_

_'I do, but…think of it this way: you spent your whole life building this architectural marvel to escape the souls of those who had died by what you felt was your own hand. This is one life you can save. Wouldn’t you want the chance to make things right? Who knows, it might take away some of that guilt you got there. Might even allow you to move on.'_

There was a beat of silence where Shane could sense her deliberation. _'_ _Very well. I will protect your friend. I don’t need another’s blood on my hands.'_

 _'It was never blood that you spilled. But thank you.'_ Shane breathed a sigh of relief. '... _Hey, Sarah? This is a lovely place you’ve got here, by the way. Kudos.'_

_'Thank you. I loathe this house from the bottom of my soul.'_

Shane fought to keep his expression neutral. Dead or not, the woman had a sense of humour.

_'Copy that.'_

Shane clapped his hands together, severing the line between the living and the dead and shattering the eerie spell of silence. The sudden noise startled everyone in the room.

“Nothing,” said Ryan a little too lightly to suggest he was disappointed.

“Yup,” Shane agreed. “Nothing at all.”

 

For the rest of the night, Shane allowed himself to relax with the knowledge that should the Ambassador decide to strike, he at least one way to defend his highly suggestible partner in crime. Instead, he expended the rest of his energy getting on both Ryan and the creative team’s collective nerves; lurking in shadowy corners; bending sound waves to create odd whispers and moans. Typical paranormal investigation hijinks. However, Devon was a little too hardened by her experiences wrangling pushy bystanders to scare easily, Mark was too busy fiddling with the lighting to notice anything awry, and TJ, annoyingly, just laughed. In short, they disappointed Shane with their stoic bravado.

But Ryan never disappointed.

The aim was always to frighten him into a state where his eyes glazed over. That was when Shane knew all common sense had flown the coup. In all honesty, it wasn’t that difficult. Plus it made for great footage if they got him scared witless on camera.

The only time Shane had reason to be concerned was when they visited the Witch's Cap, a circular room with strange accoustics. An alleged hotspot for paranormal activity, it lived up to its reputation with six poltergeists hanging out in its rafters. Shane’s eyes nearly rolled back into his head. If anything was going to happen that might draw too much attention to the supernatural, those jerks would make sure of it. Not for any reason. Just for kicks. Which was why then and there he decided on rooming with them for the night. He needed to keep an eye on them.

Then again, maybe their activity would be what snapped the wires in Ryan’s brain and sent him running. All Shane needed to do was play along with the charade.

Sure enough, as soon as Ryan turned on the spirit box (always a delightful affair that made Shane want to tear out his own eardrums), the little assholes couldn’t resist interfering with the signal.

“I’m hearing a lot of chatter in here, a LOT of chatter,” he remarked over their garbled nonsense.

“What the fuck is going on in this room?” Ryan asked, his wide eyes darting around the space.

This pointless back and forth continued for a number of minutes, but it had the desired effect. Ryan almost drove himself crazy trying to decipher the half-phrases, nearly crying out himself when a scream broke through the choppy radio waves. However, something stopped Shane from letting it go on for too long. Integrity? No. He had integrity, but that wasn’t it.

“Don’t bother with Ryan right now,” he called out to what the crew assumed was no one in particular, “it’s not worth it. Wait till he’s alone.”

 

As it happened, time for them both to be alone came much sooner than anticipated. According to the crew’s schedule, they still had to film a solo investigation with each of them down in the basement.

The basement.

Big whoop.

Basements weren’t scary. They were cold, sure, and a little bit damp. Neither of those things made any room pleasant. However, the room itself was just that; a room. If anything, Shane would be more agitated by the ridiculous headwear he had on. Or mildly irritated by having to share his time alone with Clyde, the caretaker. Ghosts tended to detest having their space encroached on by an…individual…such as himself. Especially if they knew which way they were headed when they did finally leave their haunt and move on. Shane got the sense Clyde had a couple of sins to atone for.

“Clyde!” Shane called. “Clyde. Where you hiding, pal?”

Odd... The basement was still. Where was the spectral static disturbing the air? The moans of a cursed soul? So distracted was Shane by the emptiness around him, that he missed the low beam that whacked him over the head and broke his equipment.

“Oh fucking—oh shit...” A sharp pain bloomed from the point of impact and he laughed in spite of himself. At his feet, the camera and its extension were in two pieces. “Alright, I gotta fix this.”

He sat there in the dark for a good few seconds, trying to piece the thing back together, but one of the snaps had broken off in the fall making it flimsy and weak. Shane sighed.

“You know, I’d just like to take this moment to be thankful that I have been given the opportunity to hang out in the basement of the Winchester house all alone,” he announced for the benefit of capturing at least some usable footage. “But Clyde, if you’re there, maybe you wanna help me put this back together? I could sure use some company.”

“You won’t find Clyde down here,” said a voice.

Shane nearly dropped the camera again as an all-too-familiar figure stepped into the beam of his torch. His spectacles were gone, but that didn’t stop the man’s eyes from reflecting light in the discs of his pupils.

“You know what, I take it back,” said Shane hastily, “I'm good hanging out by myself. What the Hell are you doing here?” The Ambassador approached and stared down his nose at Shane, which wasn't so difficult given his unfavourable position on the ground.

“I wanted to see for myself why you seem to be taking so long to get this job done.” 

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Oh, I never  _kid_. You, on the other hand, seem to think our meeting was some kind of joke. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting here like an imbecile, humouring this lunacy.”

“I’m not humouring anything,” Shane retorted as he climbed back to his feet and brandished the camera extension in the Ambassador’s face. “It’s all part of my elaborate plan to shut this thing down. And anyway, we agreed I had ten weeks, at least.”

“Our agreement still stands, but I am tired of waiting. So, I’ve decided to assist you.”

“Yeah, I got your message,” said Shane permitting a bite of sarcasm. “Is that why you’re really here? You’re gonna try and do Ryan in? Well, not on my watch, he's under the protection of this whole house. Your move, buckaroo.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” said the Ambassador, adjusting his cuffs like some geriatric James Bond villain. A stone dropped into to the pit of Shane’s stomach.

“It’s not?”

“No.” The Ambassador’s eyes shone maliciously. “I’m here to tell you that Ryan Bergara is very much in danger, but not because of me.”

“Then what from?”

“Well, that would be…you.” 

Shane opened his mouth to retort but he was at a loss for words. As he scrambled, the Ambassador's sinister simle grew wider. “That’s insane,” he scoffed eventually. “I would never do anything to actually hurt him. And you couldn’t force me, either.”

“I don’t have to force you to do anything," said the Abassador as he flicked a speck of rubble from his otherwise immaculate suit. "Merely exposing you is all it would take to get me what I want.”

Shane’s head was spinning. None of it made sense. His exposure, and by extension, exposure of the paranormal, was exactly what Ryan wanted. It would be just about the most compelling evidence in existence. Still, Shane couldn’t deny the feeling that the Ambassador’s threats were far from empty.

“I don’t get it. That’s what I’m supposed to  _not_  do.”

“Tell me, Mr. Medej, what do you think would happen if Ryan Bergara found real, undeniable evidence of the diabolic? Something that couldn’t be explained away as happenstance. Tell me honestly. Who would believe him?”

Shane couldn’t answer. His mouth had gone dry.

“Better yet! What do you think he would do if that evidence came in the form of one of his closest, most trusted companions?”

“No," Shane refuted. But even as the words left his lips, they were heavy and resistant. He was trying to speak through water. He was underwater. He was drowning. "No, you’re wrong about him.”

“Come now, Mr. Medej,” said the Ambassador with his unwavering smile. “We both know that isn’t true.”

 

=/=

 

The Ambassador disappeared back into the shadows whence he came a bit before Shane’s allotted ten minutes had elapsed. Shane had to make his ascent back to the land of the living weighed down by consternation. But he couldn’t let the world know that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong down there in the dark. He had to keep it to himself. He had to put on a show like he always did.

Looking back over the footage when it was uploaded to his computer, Shane would admit he may have overdone it with the portrayal of his ‘carefree’ attitude. It was, in part, an act but it was also an attempt to distract himself and keep from panicking. That being said, there was no reason apologise for his impromptu homage to ABBA—the poltergeists enjoyed it anyhow.

Admittedly, his heart did stop for a second when he found the clip of Sarah Winchester’s door opening with Ryan inside the room. It could have been the Ambassador changing his plans and Shane would not have realised till morning. He shouldn’t have been so far away.

That aside, there was one thing Shane found that nearly caused bile to rise in his throat.

At first, it had been the sudden realisation that he had never turned off his visual or audio recorders when the Ambassador first appeared. Looking through the footage though, it appeared there were a number of minutes that came up mysteriously blank. No vision. No sound. Nothing. But the camera was still rolling. It would come across as a little suspicious when or if the editors came asking for an explanation. He would remind them he had dropped the camera. Maybe a wire was knocked loose. Regardless, it was a non-issue.

What really worried Shane—what caused a bead of sweat to trickle down the back of his neck—was something entirely different.

While he had been down in the basement, Ryan and the crew had remained upstairs, still rolling, capturing tidbits to punctuate what would become the larger narrative they were trying to tell. Behind his computer screen, a tiny version of Ryan said the one thing that convinced Shane that perhaps the Ambassador was right; that maybe Ryan was in far more danger than either of them realised.

_The idea of seeing something that breaks the laws of reality is really gonna mess with your head. I don’t know why it scares me so much. It just—_

(Rewind)

_—that breaks the laws of reality is really gonna mess with your head—_

(Rewind)

_—mess with your head—_

(Pause)

(Play)

_—I don’t know why it scares me so much. It just does._


	2. The Demon Priest of Mission Solano

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wish I had finished this earlier, but given that I had two major exams last week, and that this turned out to be much longer than I anticipated, studying by day and writing by night meant I could only work so fast. *shrug* Sorry! This week my time has freed up, so I will be busting my ass to catch up and post chapter 3 before Friday's episode (well, Saturday for me). 
> 
> If you're still here, I appreciate your patience.
> 
> Also, I owe a huge thank you to Tumblr user, **jjdipshit** , for letting me borrow some ideas from one of their posts speculating on this particular episode. I would never have even thought of some of these chapter elements without being prompted first. 
> 
> P.S. To those who got to see the live post-mortem over the weekend, I am insanely jealous but I hope it was as fun as it looked.

In the past week, Shane had done a number of things that raised the eyebrows of his colleagues and close friends. The deeds, seemingly borne of pure altruism, started innocuously enough; a coffee run for the team meeting here, a tray of a dozen Kispy Kreme doughnuts there. However, by Monday, six days after the long and unusually quiet drive home from the Winchester Mansion, things were veering out of control. Shane blew his money on frivolous things. Sometimes he showed up late to work. One night, he insisted on taking his girlfriend out dancing when they both had to be up early the next morning. As an apology, of sorts, he bought her a cat the following day—never mind that their landlord forbade the keeping of any pets.

After a week of near-reckless impulsiveness, Ryan would have been blind not to notice this uncharacteristic change in behaviour. But it wasn’t until that Monday morning, when he walked into the office and found Shane with his feet kicked up onto his desk, sunglasses on, sipping orange soda from a crazy straw, with Enya blaring from his computer, that Ryan decided to confront him.

“Shane…?”

“Yeah, buddy.”

Ryan dropped his bag on his chair and took off his cap, not once looking away from Shane and his Hawaiian shirt ensemble. “You wanna tell me what I’m looking at here?” he asked.

Shane put his cup down on his desk and lowered his sunglasses to peer over the top of them. “What do you think you’re looking at?”

“Uh…” Ryan glanced at the desk strewn with ornaments, pens and memos in a haphazard mess. Next to Shane’s computer monitor was a new fishbowl that hadn’t been there on Friday. “…A quarter-life crisis, to be honest."

“Ryan, let me tell you something for free,” said Shane, sitting upright. “Birth is a curse and existence is a prison.” 

“Wait.” Ryan blinked. “You just ripped that from _The Good Place_. You’re watching it now? After I told you to a billion times and you said you wouldn’t ‘cause it was all bullshit?”

“Oh no, it’s still bullshit. But that part; that part they got right.” Shane grabbed the cup again and took a long, loud sip out of the straw. At a loss for words, Ryan snatched it from his hands.

“Hey!” Shane protested.

“Dude, what the hell is going on with you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Can I have my soda back, please?”

“No, you can have it back when you tell me why there’s a fucking Siamese fighting fish here and why you have Orinoco Flow playing on repeat.”

Shane was quiet for a beat. “I thought the place needed a little pizazz.”

Ryan breathed a long sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m gonna have an aneurysm in a minute,” he grumbled under his breath, “and you’re about to get your ass beat. Need I remind you there are other people who work here?” Ryan hit pause on the music player. The room suddenly plunged into silence, much to the relief of those nearby. “Can you at least tell me why you haven’t uploaded the GoPro footage from last week to the server?”

Sobering slightly, Shane removed his sunglasses and propped them down on his desk. “Ah. Right. There’s actually a funny story there.”

“Really?”

“Well, it’s not ‘ha ha’ funny, but more like hey, that’s a strange coinkidink—“

“Shane.”

Shane shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I lost a few minutes of video down there in the basement.”

Ryan’s brow creased. “What?”

“It must've happened after I dropped the camera.”

“That’s…odd,’ said Ryan, “and kind of shitty, actually. I thought those things were made to work even after you punt them at a brick wall.”

Shane shrugged and looked down at his lap, flicking at a pen that had the misfortune to be within reach. “I guess not. There are a good six or so minutes that come up blank.”

“Okay.” Ryan nodded, still pensive. “It’s not ideal but it’s not the end of the world either. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have just used what’s left and had that bit finished already.”

“I dunno. I guess I figured you’ve been freaking out about tomorrow. I didn’t want to bother you anymore so I kept it to myself. I was going to tell you after we got back from Sonoma—probably.”

Ryan picked his bag off his chair, placed it on the ground and sank into his seat. “Well, you’re already worrying me, so that was kind of a non-issue in the first place,” he said, returning Shane’s soda. “The video stuff; that can be dealt with. I just want to make sure there isn’t something else going on here because you've been acting weird. Like, weird even by your standards.”

Shane chuckled, letting his gaze drift up to the ceiling. “Yeah, maybe I have let things get a little out of control.”

“Dude, you bought a fighting fish.”

“His name is Don Vito.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Cause he’ll fuck you up but you’re never really sure if he’s dead or alive.”

Shane cracked a smug grin as Ryan looked at him. They both burst out laughing.

“So, your fish is the mob boss,” Ryan cackled and for a split second, Shane felt as if all was right with the world. It was just another Monday, with another morning of pointless bickering and banter before they started the daily grind. It was normal. Until their laughter ceased and Ryan’s brow resumed its thoughtful frown. “You can tell me if something’s wrong, though. No judgement. You know that, right?”

Shane nodded and admitted a small but genuine smile. “Yeah. I know—thanks. However, this is nothing you need to worry about. I admit, I’m in a bit of funk but between me and Don Vito here, we’re gonna figure it out.”

“Alright,” said Ryan as he stood and started in the direction of the coffee station, “I’ll let you figure it out with the fish, I guess. But as your friend who gives a shit, I’m still keeping an eye on you. Who knows? Maybe all your bullshit finally caught up with you and this is actually some demon who’s trying to screw with your life.”

“No demons that I don’t already know how to deal with,” said Shane as he watched Ryan retreat to the other side of the office. With Ryan’s back turned, Shane hunched over his desk. He let out a soft groan and placed his head in his hands.

If Ryan knew how close he was to the truth, neither of them would have been laughing. The Ambassador had warned Shane. He was going to be exposed for what he truly was one way or another, but it was only in the last three days that he realised the old heathen had a specific method of torture in mind. It would be a slow reveal. Painful. And fraught with anxiety as he waited for the inevitable moment that someone else noticed something off.

Scraping his hands through his hair, Shane could feel where he had attacked his ever-growing horns with industrial-grade sandpaper that morning. He had a few weeks before they became unmanageable. Before he would have to take some drastic measures.

But that wasn’t even close to the most alarming development.

While brushing his teeth after breakfast, Shane had been staring idly at his own reflection when the blacks of his pupils started to bleed into his irises. Alarmed, he spat out his toothpaste and grasped the edge of the sink in white-knuckled hands to look back in the mirror. His eyes were normal. Perfectly ordinary. None but he would know that anything had happened.

Unless it happened again.

Shane could take measures to control his appearance to some degree, but eventually, that and his odd behaviour would be noticed for what they really were; a desperate attempt to cling to his life in the mortal world, even if only for a few short weeks. For he knew that once he returned home, he would never be allowed to leave. He was as damned as the other souls that wound up in the recesses of fire and brimstone. It was only a matter of time.

“What do you think, DV,” Shane murmured as he tapped the glass bowl with a pen, “what do I do?” The fish shook itself awake, a shimmering blob of jet-black ink suspended in water. Shane tapped the glass again, and Don Vito took that as a cue to fling himself against the bowl. Each time Shane provoked the fish, it grew more agitated. More aggressive. And each time, he felt a spark of an idea be fanned into a flame.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were telling me to stick it to the Man.”

Don Vito stared back at him, unblinking, uncomprehending, but ready to retaliate at a moment’s notice.

Shane’s one job on Earth was to blend in and make sure proof of the paranormal—supernatural—what have you—didn’t become common knowledge. He had been doing that job pretty well, too, until the Ambassador showed up. As it was, the Ambassador seemed to think that if Ryan knew the truth about Shane, it would break him. That still could be true. Shane didn’t want to find out either way. But, if he could help Ryan find definitive proof of the supernatural before his true self was made known to the world, perhaps it would soften the blow of his...well, there was no easy way to put it; ghastly demonic nature.

If the plan failed and Ryan’s brain _did_ snap when faced with reality in the end, at the very least Shane would have created one kidney stone of a debacle for the Ambassador and his department to sift through. Wiping the memory of one person required days’ worth of paperwork. Imagine the workload when both he and Ryan had a wide and dedicated audience at their disposal.

Hell really didn’t hold a candle to the torture of bureaucracy.

With their impromptu joust apparently over, Don Vito resumed floating in a near-comatose state. Shane grinned.

“Yeah. If I’m going down, why not go down in a blazing inferno?” 

 

=/=

 

The following evening saw Shane, Ryan, Devon, TJ and Mark standing in the middle of Sonoma, gazing in silent contemplation at the Mission San Francisco Solano. When they had come by that late afternoon to check with the caretakers that everything was in place for their tour, the building had looked rather underwhelming. Like one of those small-town museums frequented by school children and the local Rotary committee. It was different at night. In the eerie gloom, the mission’s chalk-white walls almost seemed to glow, and the shadows of the street surrounding it deepened to a black abyss.

“Alright, let’s get you boys geared up,” said Mark, turning to open the boot of his SUV parked on the curb. With the group having been rendered speechless by their collective knowledge of the horrors that occurred some 200 years before, it was Mark’s nonchalant tone that broke their spell of mild aversion. Though, it wasn’t enough to keep Ryan from nervously muttering under his breath as they donned their body cams and microphones.

“Can you just be chill for once in your life?” Shane asked before putting his flashlight between his teeth to clip on his camera.

“On this investigation? _This_ one?” Ryan let out a humourless chuckle. “That’s funny. You’re a funny guy. Really. Hilarious.”

Normally, Shane would dismiss Ryan’s trepidation over the kind of expedition that awaited them. However, this time even he was willing to quietly admit Ryan’s anxieties might not have been totally off base. Local legend had it that it was not a ghost, ghoul or wraith that haunted the halls and barracks of Mission Solano, but a demon; a heinous abomination that openly defied God in his own house. Not something lightly trifled with. Though whether that demon was borne of the horrific tragedies that befell the Native peoples at the hands of the Missionaries; the corrupted soul of Padre José Alitmíra; or even real, no one could say.

Not even Shane could tell what was awaiting them inside. And that did not bode well.

When they were done fitting themselves with their equipment, Ryan and Shane stood at the pedestrian crossing with Devon checking their clothes and hair and waited for TJ to give them their cue. At that moment, Devon reached up to try and fix Shane’s fringe. He recoiled.

‘Woah, hey, what are you doing?”

“My job,” said Devon. “You know, making sure you’re camera-ready. You’ve got a whole bird’s nest going on up there.”

“Well, that’s rude.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll fix it, just let me…” He trailed off, smoothing back his hair before she could try to meddle again. He made sure not to flatten it too close to his head. “There. Better?”

Devon narrowed her eyes and shot him a suspicious look. “I guess so.” She shrugged. “Whatever, it’s your mug,” she said and moved on to fuss over Ryan, who was a little more compliant.

“What’s the bet that this investigation turns out like the last few?” Shane mused to Ryan, continuing their earlier conversation. Ryan shoved his hands in his pockets despite Devon’s attempts to adjust his cardigan. With her work done, she moved off.

“You mean me ending up so terrified I nearly crap my pants?” Ryan replied.

“I’m just saying this guy—this demon—is probably a wimp like the rest of ‘em. And that’s assuming he’s even real.”

Ryan looked up at Shane, a glimmer triumph in his eyes. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that was you conceding.”

Shane scoffed. “Not on your life.”

“Ready on set,” TJ called when Mark finished setting up the camera. “And we’re rolling.”

 

The first thing Shane noticed upon crossing Mission Solano’s threshold, aside from the clichéd creak of the aged door, was the silence. In the flyer-littered lobby, the air had a staleness to it. Not from a lack of ventilation per se, but from a lack of disturbance; as though all the energy it might have once contained had been removed, and removed unwillingly at that. Surely, Shane thought, they would have had some company. Perhaps not in the form of the infamous demon himself, but the in remnants of the broken souls left to toil on the moral plane. Souls whose lives were cut short, left with unfinished business to attend to. Instead, everything around them was quiet and still. Tomb-like. Not even the little noises that startled Ryan could be blamed on the supernatural. Buildings shifted on their foundations all the time and the Mission Solano was no exception. But for a place that had known such tragedy, those shouldn’t have been the only disturbances Shane heard.

Ryan tried the spirit box in the first room and unlike all the times before, Shane did nothing to tamper with its transmission. If he was committed to exposing the paranormal one strange occurrence at a time, he had to ignore his instinct to interfere. Then again, maybe he just wanted to know if they really were alone. The spirit box screamed to life but yielded no words in English or Spanish they could discern. There were brief disruptions here and there, but that could easily have been due to the nearby radio tower.

It was awfully quiet out there.

Over the road, the Adobe Barracks were in much the same way. Eerie silence permeated the ground level where the beds were still set up on display, save for when Ryan accidentally tripped the security alarm. It was utterly deserted. Firing up the spirit box again, Shane felt as blind to the spirit realm as Ryan. For once he was also relying on that stupid contraption to reveal the truth. Though, deep down he knew the spirit box wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. Either their Spanish was so atrocious that it had offended all the resident spirits into fleeing the property, or the Mission Solano’s reputation rested squarely on its miserable history and a series of tall tales. None of which helped when Shane was actively trying to give Ryan some leverage.

“Nothing,” said Ryan, not for the first time that night. It was hard to tell if he was relieved or beginning to give up hope.

“Well you know, thick walls. I think we’ll have better luck in the courtyard. Plus, it’s nighttime,” said Shane as he looked over to the door. It was still open. The temperate night air whistled softly into the room with a wistful music to it that beckoned him. He wanted to follow.

Ryan frowned and looked over to Devon. “Did we have the courtyard on the run-sheet?” he asked.

“Cut,” TJ sighed. Mark stopped filming.

“Um…” Devon flipped through her schedule. “Not really.”

“Can we do it anyway?” Shane asked.

“Why?” TJ asked. “It’s nine forty-five and we still have to do your bit in the church.”

“I…got a feeling,” said Shane, unable to think of a better excuse. “Maybe there might be something out there that we missed, who knows? Leave no stone unturned.”

Devon chewed her lip, humming. “If you’re only going off a hunch, I can give you five minutes, tops. If you’re just goofing off, it’ll be two. But I don’t think there’s anything out there of interest according to my notes.”

Ryan emitted a squeak of disagreement, though by the look on his face he was reluctant to share his thoughts. “There is that thing about the bear, remember?”

“Oh, that’s good,” said Shane. “Why not check that out?”

“The bear?” Devon repeated, scanning the page.

“Yeah, there’s supposed to be a bear apparition that’s appeared once or twice,” Ryan explained. “I have to say, between that and the demon I don’t know which one I’d want to find less. Though, I guess it would kind of tie in with the bit about the Osos that kidnapped General Valejo—if we’re still covering that.”

“Yeah.” Devon shook her head to herself and looked up from the schedule. “Alright, you guys have got fifteen minutes. Then we’re over to the flag room, then back in the chapel.”

Shane shot Ryan a grin. “Let’s go catch ourselves a ghost bear.”

Ryan groaned. “Goddamnit.”

 

Back over the road, the group trekked, and the pull of a certain _something_ further sank its hooks in Shane.

“You’re being oddly open-minded tonight,” Ryan remarked, pulling his cardigan around himself against the frigid wind. Shane breathed in the air scented by pine, feeling invigorated

“Or maybe I think we need to raise the stakes a little. Get your adrenaline pumping again. Maybe the bear can help us out.”

“Oh, I see, this is just you being a dick,” Ryan deadpanned. “I mean, clearly, setting off the alarm before wasn’t enough.”

“Not for you. Come on, Ryan, I’m throwing you a bone here. You have to admit, you and your little posse, your “Boogaras”, you’ve had a dismal last season. I’m giving you a chance to redeem yourselves.”

Ryan stalled in mock outrage. “So this is pity?”

Shane swivelled to face him and smirked. “A little bit.”

Of course, Shane was quite certain and correct in his assumptions that they would find no bear roaming the empty courtyard. Even if it had ever appeared to some hapless visitor or parishioner, it was elsewhere that night, like every other alleged ghost that called the mission and its grounds home. That wasn’t an issue. Shane had other reasons he wanted to pay a visit. As they approached the centre, where a fountain rose from the ground in stacked stones, he recognised a kind of peaceful tranquillity, like standing in the eye of a hurricane. He hadn’t felt anything like it in the longest time, forgotten it almost, but he had sensed it, and it had called to him.

“Here, let’s just take a moment to appreciate the ambience right now,” Shane said as he sat up on the ledge of the fountain. Ryan came to an abrupt halt, mildly confused by their sudden pause. His hand-held camera was still recording.

“Yeah, I guess it is pretty good ambience,” he agreed. He was distracted, however, peering off down darkened paths, trying to glimpse anything out of the ordinary.

“You know,” said Shane, drawing Ryan’s attention back to him, “what’s really interesting to me is on a night like this you don’t hear a lot of modern sounds, maybe some cars in the distance, but you could put yourself in the mind people hundreds of years ago and think they were hearing almost exactly what you hear right now.”

Ryan paused, tilting his head and actually listening for the soundscape Shane described. “That is true.”

“You listen to that. Just be silent for twenty seconds and imagine you’re here, but a hundred years ago.”

“Maybe look up into the stars?”

“Yeah.”

They both lifted their heads to drink in the starlight and in doing so, let a different kind of silence wash over them. This silence did not ring with the faint omen of death; it sang with life. Crickets chirped around them, an owl’s stealthy wings beat overhead, and the breeze sighed as if contented—a sentiment with which Shane concurred.

This was hardly his first time walking in the mortal world. Three years it may have been since he arrived in this body, but Shane had made other visits to the mortal world in other times. Times that, in a strange, sombre way, he missed. The quiet atmosphere free of hustle and mindless noise was one of the few things he grew nostalgic for. And though it was, by all logic, impossible, for a moment Shane could have fooled himself into thinking that he had unwound the past; that Ryan was with him, standing in that same spot a century before.

All that past week, Shane had been weighed down by an impending sense of doom. His home was lurking somewhere beyond his horizons, and slowly, he had come to accept what was waiting for him down the end of this treacherous, defiant path he had decided to walk. Only this time, when he left the mortal world, he would not be coming back. Once he went home, he was trapped. The border between worlds would never admit him again after how badly he had screwed over his superiors. This moment might have been his last chance to hear the sounds of silence.

How comforting then, to share it with his best friend, no matter if Ryan truly understood its significance.

“Well now that we’ve shared that tender moment,” said Ryan, “shall we go inside and find a demon?”

Shane blinked to attention and squashed the little pang of loss he felt with a light chuckle. “Yeah, let’s go do that.”

 

In the time since they’d been away, something had changed about the Mission Solano.

As Ryan, Shane and their crew walked through the foyer, the air had a peculiar climate to it. Not hot, exactly. Not cold, either. It somehow made Shane’s skin feel warm to the touch, yet nipped at him with an icy bite. Then there was the smell. Like the faint scent of charred rubber mixed with mildew. It wasn’t enough to be overpowering but it was enough to be noticed.

“Anyone getting a strange smell?” Shane asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Just you,” said Ryan.

Shane rose a brow. “Are you saying you don’t, or are you saying I stink?”

“…Yes.” 

Shane scowled. “TJ, can you help me lock Ryan in here with the scary demon?”

“NO! Oh my god please don’t do that,” Ryan half-laughed, half-cried. “I’m kidding, dude, it just smells like a church. I don’t know.” Shane looked to the others for an opinion and they agreed.

“Right.” He pressed his lips together, and warily glanced over his shoulder. “Just like a church.”

They reached the solid double-doors and with a minor voicing of his own internal conflict, Ryan opened them and went through. Shane followed, the crew close on his tail. From here on out the cameras would be rolling almost constantly.

So, of course, the demon had finally decided to make its presence known.

Shane hadn’t seen hide or hair of the creature in a corporal form yet, but if he could catch a whiff of that pungent aroma while the others remained oblivious, then all signs pointed to an unwelcome visitant. To pander to the skeptics or bolster the believers: that was the question Shane faced. It was easy to make bold promises to himself in theory but with his loyalties now being tested, the answer wasn’t so clear. Would it really be a good idea to expose the diabolic in such a crude scheme?

What of the consequences?

What of the price unto his own soul (or lack thereof)?

What would happen to Ryan?

Standing at the altar with their flashlights primed and ready, the crew stepped back and let the scene unfold. Ryan explained their purpose to what, for all he could tell, was an empty room. Shane struggled not to betray his distractedness at the sounds of something moving and shifting in the shadows. In his absentminded state, he let slip an unsettled laugh as he tried to contribute to the dialogue.

“I don’t think you understand what we’re meddling with here,” said Ryan incredulously.

“Uh, yeah I do,” said Shane, but he wasn’t sure his conviction carried. There was still an uncomfortable chuckle caught in his throat. Ryan looked at him in blatant concern, though given the circumstances, that concern was probably reserved for his own wellbeing.

“Alright. See these lights?” Ryan continued addressing the dark. “We want you to use them. Let us know you’re here. Turn the off the black one and turn on the white one.”

They both watched the torchlights and their unwavering beams. Nothing changed. Nor could Shane feel the presence of anything other than restless potential energy. Either this demon, if it was to be called that, was loathe to bow to the whims of a mortal man, or it had been drained of all energy with which to manifest. Choosing to reside in a church when you were unholy incarnate would have that effect. If it had made such a bold choice, this guy was a free-range idiot. No dark powers could rectify that kind of conceitedness.

That being said, there were still ways a demon could manifest, even if on the brink of fading into oblivion. It just needed a push. If a demon was commanded by an entity harnessing more power than itself, sometimes that entity’s power could be borrowed. And if, in this scenario, that powerful entity happened to be Shane, even in his quasi-mortal state… Well, the irony would be too delicious for him to resist. With that, Shane decided to be a man of his word.

“Exert all your power.”

There he sensed it, somewhere in the room. Ever-shifting, ever moving; roiling energy, like the yawning stretch of a slumbering eldritch god. However, the lights stayed as they were. Clearly, this pitiful demon needed a little more persuasion.

“You’ve been dormant for too long,” Shane goaded.

Suddenly, Ryan’s eyes wide and alight with fear snapped up to look down the length of the empty chapel.

“What was that?” He gasped. “It sounded like footsteps.”

Thrilled by the sensation of his hairs standing on end, Shane peered along the pews and let his eyes take in as much of the limited light as he dared. Out of the darkness, a pale face stared back at him.

“Demon,” said Shane lowly with a small, sly smile, “I command you to turn off the light.”

A figure clad in a priest’s cassock approached, dragging its feet and glaring at the two of them with pure, black eyes. It brushed past Mark, who gave an involuntary shudder, and stopped before Ryan and Shane in front of the altar. With a crooked finger, it reached out to touch the torch. The light went out.

“Huh.” Ryan stared dumbly down at the torches, uneasy, maybe even a little shell-shocked, but demon’s reaction was too late to send him into true a spiral of terror.

“Well it looks like it’s having fun with us,” said Shane in mock cheerfulness. To his somewhat perverse delight, the demon emitted a low snarl. Yet it did not move to attack him—it couldn’t while its power was indebted to him.

“Yeah, I’m having so much fun,” Ryan snapped. “Do I look like I’m having fun?”

Shane shifted his gaze away from the livid demon to see Ryan’s face was a bleak shade of pale, His eyes were glazed. He looked like he was about to have a heart attack. For some strange reason, Shane felt a twinge of guilt. “No, you really don’t,” he admitted. 

To Shane, the idea of Ryan being scared by something or someone other than himself had become less and less of a comfortable thought of late. Mortal or not, Ryan was his friend—his best friend—and though Shane got a kick out of making him squirm, he knew where to draw the line. But other spirits, other demons; they had no mercy and would break a suggestible human if they got the chance.

Ryan attempted to command the demon again, but it seemed that in part, both of Shane’s hunches had been correct. The demon snarled and spat in Ryan’s direction without touching the lights, making its position clear: it would not take orders from him.

“What’s gonna need to happen for you to be convinced there’s something in here?” Ryan queried. “For me, I would need to see those turn off exactly when we say, then turn off in the order that we say.”

“Okay, we’ll give it a shot,” said Shane and stared pointedly at the demon. “Turn the black one on in five…four…three…two…one.”

The demon did not move. With a nagging feeling in his stomach, and a chill dancing down his spine, Shane narrowed his eyes at it in a menacing fashion. Still, it disobeyed.

“Ah, that sucks, I guess there’s no demon inside here,” Ryan said feigning disappointment.

“Yeah. That’s the end of the episode,” Shane agreed, though he had to force his jovial laughter.

As if just to spite him, the demon suddenly smiled. Then it extinguished the light—and with it, every last ounce of Shane’s hubris.   

 

Back in the foyer, Shane was starting to feel the way Ryan looked; jaw clenched, muscles tensed and approaching a state of catatonic panic. A light sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead as they discussed the logistics of their individual investigations.

“I was thinking of going first this time,” said Ryan while fidgeting with his spirit box.

Shane’s stomach dropped into his shoes and he had to catch his tongue before his reaction betrayed his alarm. “Hang on, don’t I usually go first?” he asked carefully.

“Yeah, usually. But you always end up doing something to psych me out. Anyway, you can’t stop talking about how nothing scares you—”

“Wrong.”

“—whereas I just want this over and done with.”

Shane appraised Ryan, searching for a scrap of inspiration that would help to persuade him otherwise. From what Shane had seen inside the church, the demon wasn’t responding to his orders. Not straight away. In theory, that should have been impossible. If he had true dominion over it, it shouldn’t have even been able to flirt with the idea of disputing his commands. Yet that was exactly what happened, and that same demon was still lurking inside, waiting for one or all of them to return. Shane had to try and diffuse the situation before Ryan put himself in real potential danger. But he couldn’t very well _say_ that was the reason.

“I still think I should go first,” said Shane.

Ryan frowned. “Why?”

“Uh…for the sake of format?”

“Seriously? We can just edit it around later. Or have you forgotten you make videos for a living?”

“Well actually, according to you, I hunt ghosts.”

Ryan scoffed. “You antagonize ghosts, that’s not the same thing. If you go in there first, you’re just going to piss it off and that’s not gonna be fun for me.”

“Probably. But then you might finally get some compelling evidence for the Boogaras,” said Shane as he turned towards the black rectangle of the doorway.

“Wait, no, no. I don’t want to clean up your shit,” Ryan protested. 

Shane snapped his fingers and pointed back to him. “That’s what I’m trying to avoid.”

Ryan faltered and his brow furrowed. He glanced from Shane to the crew, but if anyone thought there was something odd about that statement, they made no comment.  

“Alright, here we go. Into the shadows. Just give me a holler, you know?” Shane said over his shoulder as he walked away. “What are we doing, ten minutes?”

Ryan sighed and shook his head to himself. “Yeah.”

Shane crossed the threshold and began his stroll down the aisle that sliced down the centre of the pews. The floorboards sounded hollow beneath his boots. His footsteps resonated and drifted around him, echoed by the acoustics of an open space.

“Hello, demon,” said Shane with a touch of a dramatic flair, “it’s me. Shane Medej has arrived. And I’m here to teach you a lesson—except I’m really not because I don’t think there’s anyone here.”

The response to Shane’s intentional jibe was immediate, like the explosion of a firecracker. The demon manifested in front of him, its gaunt, oddly hornless visage obscuring his field of vision. It pulled back its lips in a snarl, baring teeth that could tear the toughest piece of flesh to ribbons. It was obviously offended. But Shane endeavoured to maintain his unperturbed facade. He lifted a hand, signalling for the demon to keep its distance and prayed to a higher power that it would work.

The demon came no closer, seemingly against its will. So perhaps the delay from before was simply an anomaly.

Shane broke into a gleeful smile.

“Your whole team,” he continued, testing his immunity, “your pal down by the little bridge in Texas? Your bro over at the Sallie House? You guys don’t got a good record. You guys can’t stand up to a lanky, old doofus like me?”

The demon hissed, affronted but powerless against Shane’s silent command. Resentment broiled in its eyes.

“I’m looking at your little lights,” he said. “Your ‘demon’ lights. Why don’t you turn them off for me?”

This was not a suggestion but an order, and the demon knew as much. It screeched back at Shane as it slunk over to where the torches sat waiting, and with one last glower, reached out an appendage to turn off the light.

Then, at the same moment, two things happened at once.

The first was the contact between the demon’s hand and the torch; the contact that would have broken the electrical circuit and forced the bulb to flicker out.

The second was the occurrence of a singular thought that flashed like a spark in Shane’s mind. An idea. 

The light stayed on. It never wavered for a second. Bemused, the demon retracted its hand and tried again but still, it had no luck. Emitting a suspicious growl from the back of its throat, it hunched and examined the torch.

“Oh, oh, can you do it?”

The demon’s entire body stiffened. Slowly, it turned to face Shane.

“Oh no, you can’t? Oh, is that hard for you?”

Contorting its already ghastly face, the demon let out a furious scream when it realised the light would not die because _Shane didn’t want it to_. And Shane could feel that power coursing through his veins, growing stronger as it had been day by day; that ever-strengthening power which reminded him he was on borrowed time.

“Oh, I’m trying the best I can. I’m just a little demon! Unbelievable,” Shane taunted as the demon stalked towards him hissing, screeching and spitting all the while. Shane lifted the corner of his lip in a sneer.

Really, there was no need for that kind of behaviour. It was most undignified, even for the demonic.

“I’m gonna be quiet now,” said Shane as the demon circled him with murder in its eyes. “This is the part where I invite you to do your very best _to_ _kill me._ That’s what I’m asking of you. Give it a go.”

There was a second where the demon, in its corporeal form, seemed to flicker. A second where Shane thought he saw something or someone different to this uncanny guise of a tortured and tormented priest. It was forgotten as the demon wound up and lunged.

The demon launched into an attack, but to Shane’s mild surprise, never hit him. It rebounded upon colliding with the unprecedented force of a barrier that he  willed around himself. Several feet away, the demon landed in a heap on the ground.

“Nothing?” Shane mocked. “Hm? Fine. Come on. What are you doing here? Stop wasting my time, demon! Have at me, kill me, hurt me!”

With a weakened grunt and its nails scraping at the ground, the demon lifted its head and looked at him. There was no malice in its gaze. It merely stared with its deep, endlessly black eyes. “You are a fool…” it hissed with an inhuman snarl. “But do not fret; your time will come.”

Whether it was the way this pitiful creature had taken its defeat lying down, or the lack of disrespect he felt he was owed, a sudden rage flared in Shane that caused his hands and jaw to clench.

“I’ll tell you what, I don’t give a shit, demon,” he growled. “You hear me?”

Inside Shane, there was something that wanted to return every shriek and scream the demon had hurled at him. It wanted any excuse to absolve himself of decorum and give in to the carnal desire to unleash pure chaos.

But there was no rational reason for that.  

Shane had fulfilled his purpose and subdued the Demon Priest of Mission Solano (though it was hardly deserving of such a title). Now he could rest assured that Ryan wouldn’t walk straight into the arena of his own demise. His work was done. All his anger and frustration he let simmer away. He allowed his tone to lighten.

“Shot in the dark, is there a ghost bear here? Any kind of ghost bear? Cause not gonna lie, that would have been awesome.”

 

“Well? How was it?” Ryan asked when Shane reemerged. His eyes were wide and searching, as though he was expecting to see the demon clinging to Shane’s shirt in plain sight. However, as Ryan listened to Shane’s report, all worry drained out of his expression until it resembled a stone slate.

“Um. It was, uh, very challenging. This demon is unlike any demon we’ve faced before. So, tread lightly.”

“I don’t even know why I ask you these kinds of questions,” Ryan deadpanned.

“Yeah, there’s nothing in there,” said Shane with a laugh. “It’s empty. It’s an empty room. You’ll be fine.” And just to feel reassured, he reminded himself, _I’ve made sure of it._

There was no reason for Shane to be worried. If the demon had received its ass on a platter without him lifting little more than a finger, there was very little chance Ryan would leave the mission that night with a fresh case of possession.

But that didn’t stop his stomach from churning as Ryan disappeared through the door, into the chapel.

“Here we go,” came Ryan’s voice, distorted and made hollow by the empty acoustics. Shane moved to the doorway, intent on supervising the scene as Ryan edged down the aisle. “Alrighty, you’ve been waiting for this moment, I feel like. You wanted me. Here I am.”

Ryan’s entrance was noticed in an instant. Despite still being in the process of picking itself up off the ground, the demon was intent on watching this new foolhardy visitor approach. And Shane could have sworn it said “ _yes_.”

“Shane?”

Shane started and found Devon at his side, trying to see around his shoulder.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Uh, nothing,” he replied a little too hastily to not prompt Devon into raising her brow, “he’s just talking to himself, you know how he gets.”

She hummed in agreement. “I swear, with all the times I’ve had to listen to you both talk to yourselves in these places, you’d think I wouldn’t find it as weird as I do.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Shane, but he was only half listening. He was more preoccupied with the demon, which had now risen and was but a few feet from where Ryan stood trembling and muttering feeble reassurances to himself. “Shit…”

“What?” Devon asked.

“Nothing, I just…remembered I left the iron on this morning.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine. Sara would have realised before work...” And from that point, Shane ignored Devon completely to give his sole focus to the live horror movie playing out before him. The demon had maneuvered behind Ryan and was stalking his every step. Every now and then it would reach out and swipe at him, teasing, just missing him with a set of razor-sharp fingernails.

“My name is Ryan and I’m in a house of God,” he said, slowing as he neared the altar once more. Drawing a breath, he appeared to gather every morsel of his shaky courage to ask, “Why are you here? Why do you remain?”

The demon halted, letting Ryan falter ahead. Then it turned its neck to show Shane the horrifying grin spread across its face, and with perfect diction asked, “Would you like to tell him, Mr. Medej? Or shall I?”

Shane’s protest died in his throat as the illusion of the demon priest shimmered like a mirage and evaporated. In its place stood a man, bony and stooped like a living corpse.

“ _What_?!” Shane whispered.

“Oh, and it suddenly got really cold, that’s fun,” said Ryan, utterly oblivious to the fact the Ambassador of Hell on Earth was within an arm’s reach of him.

“You _son of a_ —” Shane was stopped from sprinting into the room by a hand that clamped down on his arm.

“What the hell are you doing?” Devon hissed. “You’re going to ruin the take.”

“It’s Ryan, he’s in trouble.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s—he’s…”

What was he supposed to say?

“He’s freaked out.”

“Shane, I think he’s fine,” said Devon with a concerned, searching look. “Sure, he’s a little shaken but he’s a grown man who can take care of himself and, in all honesty, only has himself to blame. I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately—maybe you need a decent night sleep—I don’t know—but just let us get through this shoot. If you run in there like a maniac you’ll just set him and everyone else off.”

Though Devon couldn’t possibly understand the gravity of the situation, there was a part of what she said that appealed to Shane’s sense of logic. If he tried to intervene; if Ryan saw that Shane was genuinely spooked by something that couldn’t be explained, they might as well have wheeled him off to the nearest psychiatric ward. Shane’s only choice was to helplessly watch over Ryan, white-knuckled and clinging to the door.

“If there’s something in here, turn off those lights,” Ryan ordered despite his fearfully affected voice. “Can you?”

The Ambassador stooped down to speak into Ryan’s ear, a sight that nearly made Shane throw up in his mouth. “I don’t know, that depends if I’m allowed—isn’t that right, Mr. Medej? I know; maybe I should give our friend here something a little more _compelling_ to chew on. What do you say?”

Shane flared his nostrils, contorted his mouth into a snarl and hurled one clear thought at the Ambassador _: Touch him and you’ll burn._

“Oh, by all means,” said the Ambassador as he reached a skeletal hand for Ryan’s shoulder, “you’re welcome to come and stop me. But I’m afraid desperate times call for desperate measures.”

When he later attempted to recall exactly what transpired in the following thirty seconds, Shane would find the details blurred in and out of chronology. He was overcome by a rush. A surge of power that burned like acid in his veins. And his eyesight changed. When he closed his eyes, he opened them again and found he could see the room in unbelievable clarity despite the dark. In the sharpest detail, he watched as the Ambassador grasped Ryan by the shoulder, only to wrench his hand away with his face twisted in a scream of agony. The hand smouldered and smoked as though it had been branded by a white-hot iron. And when Shane finally remembered himself, where he was, and what he was doing, he found Devon.

Devon who hadn’t left his side for a second.

Devon who was staring at him as though she had seen the face of the Devil himself.

With beads of sweat forming on his forehead and a sickening sense of realisation, Shane glanced behind to check on Mark and TJ; they were both distracted by the equipment they were trying to pack away. They hadn’t noticed anything amiss. Ryan was still inside the chapel, frightened out of his wits but ignorant of how close Hell had come to knocking on his doorstep.

But the Ambassador was another story.

“What have you done?!” he screeched, clutching his mangled hand as it sizzled and fried. If Shane was being honest with himself, he wasn’t entirely sure. But he did know one thing for certain.

“Alright, Ryan! That’s time.”

“Is it?” Ryan called back. “Oh, thank God.”

“Yeah, you’re done,” said Shane as he glanced at the stopwatch that still had a minute and thirty seconds remaining. Devon’s unblinking stare darted from the timer to him. “Dev,” he began slowly and carefully, “I think I may owe you a teeny, tiny explanation, but I need you to keep a lid on it for now. Okay? Do you think you can do that for me?” Frozen in shock and fearful of what might become of her if she refused, Devon managed a stiff nod and shuffled over to TJ and Mark, who were more than a little bewildered by her sudden shift in humour. Shane left them to find Ryan and escort him out of the church before the Ambassador, crippled by pain though he was, got any more ideas.

“I’ll have you hanged by your entrails for this,” the Ambassador spat as he passed.

“Yeah, sure,” Shane muttered under his breath before greeting an utterly relieved Ryan Bergara. “So, how’d you find it?” 

“That was fucking awful. I am so glad that’s over,” said Ryan, to which Shane couldn’t help but laugh. “Seriously, I’m never coming back here again.”

Shane nodded in agreement. “You know what, man? Me neither.”

As they walked away bickering from the altar, Shane threw one last look at the Ambassador; the kind of look he would reserve for some disgusting smear of crap he’d found on the bottom of his shoe. Ryan made a beeline for the door, though he allowed for a brief pause first.

“Tripod’s over there. Any last things you want to say to this thing?” he asked Shane.

Shane gave a silent chuckle and stared directly into the Ambassador’s livid eyes. “Yeah, see ya later buddy. You got nothing. You got nothing on the ghoul boys.”

“Adios, demon,” said Ryan, bolstered by the high of liberation and Shane’s own insolence. “You blew it! You had your chance to bag you a Bergmeister and you blew it.”

Something dangerous flashed in the eyes of the Ambassador as they passed and suddenly Shane was feeling less confident in their imperviousness to his diabolic power.

“Alright, okay, that’s plenty,” he warned Ryan.  

“See you later!”

“This is insufferable.”

“Is it?” Ryan asked, unable to be dissuaded. “ _Is_ it?

“Yes.”

Ryan ignored him. “You’re never gonna see this mug again!”

From where he stayed, the Ambassador sent them off with a glowing glare. Shane looked over his shoulder just in time to see the old man’s eyes plunge into blackness.

“On the contrary, I think I shall be seeing you very soon, Mr. Bergara,” he gritted out.

“Okay, alright,” said Shane as he practically pushed Ryan out the door. “That’s enough from you.”

He was about to follow but before he exited himself, he had one last thing to say to the Ambassador.

“I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, but you if you touch my boy again, that hand will be the least of your worries.”

 

=/=

 

Two days and thirty–eight ‘seen’ messages later, Shane was waiting in his car before work with two lattes in his lap. Any minute now, she would show.

She had to.

Or his life was as good as over.

A sharp rap on the window alerted him of a blonde-haired woman opening the passenger door and dropping into the seat beside him. She did not greet him. He suspected she barely knew what to say.

“I’m surprised you decided to see me,” said Shane as he held out the large cup of caffeine elixir. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it.

“Yeah, I’m surprised too,” Devon muttered.

“I assume you have questions.”

Devon barked a humourless, almost manic laugh. “More than I can remember to write down.” She stared down at her coffee while she picked at the plastic lid and added quietly, “Your eyes turned black. Did you know that?”

“Not at the time,” Shane admitted, “but I sort of figured it out later. You know, context clues.”

“Right.”

They sat in silence, watching a crow as it sauntered across the parking lot.

“And Ryan doesn’t know?” Devon asked.

“If he did, do you reckon we’d even be entertaining the idea of these whacked out investigations just for a paycheck? Ryan believes, but beyond that he’s just as clueless as everyone else.”

Devon shook her head to herself and took a long sip from her coffee. “So, explain it to me then,” she said. “Tell me everything I need to know from the beginning.”

Shane nodded. “Alright. From the beginning.”


	3. The Terrors of Yuma Territory Prison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as I'm getting better with these updates I'm about to get worse...
> 
> As an FYI to all of you out there, due to my having an exam AND a writing competition this week, chapter 4 will be posted later than usual (which is going to put me behind but that's a problem for future me to deal with). I managed to survive two out of four rounds of this comp and am now moving on to the third. I am also currently ranked as first out of thirty in my heat which is very exciting! Also, there's an exam in there somewhere (lol). So, wish me luck and I'll see you on the other side with a new chapter - which I'm quite excited for, might I add.

When Devon called an end-of-week production team meeting in the empty board-room on Friday morning, Shane strolled on over, coffee in hand, expecting to snooze his way through progress reports, media marketing strategies and so on. Instead, he found the woman herself waiting, arms folded, and bursting with a thousand questions for him, specifically.

He’d been ambushed good and proper.

For a mortal with a rather dubious belief in the divine and diabolic alike, Devon had taken Shane’s news rather well—considering it had essentially crumbled her entire worldview and nearly driven her to a state of existential crisis. When she had taken a leap of faith and met Shane in his car yesterday morning (a slightly creepy proposition in hindsight, but he had to ensure they would not be overheard), he told her the basics; yes, there was a Heaven and Hell, so to speak; yes, he was a diabolic entity whose job _had_ been to ensure that evidence of the supernatural remained as discredited as possible; no, he had no intention to hurt or possess anyone; yes, he did have horns; no, she was not allowed to see them.

They made him feel self-conscious. End of discussion.

“But how do I know any of us can trust you?” Devon had asked, a question which, while expected, still hit Shane like a punch in his gut.

“Because…I’m still the same me I’ve always been,” was all he could reply.

After sitting in contemplative silence while Devon slowly wrapped her head around the fact that Shane, her friend and colleague, was one of the very entities he and Ryan were supposedly chasing, they parted ways and Shane kept his distance for the rest of the day. She needed time to digest. He could respect that. His only hope was that she would heed his warning and keep everything she knew to herself. Thankfully, Devon did so with great success. Nobody was running around the office screaming that the end was nigh by the end of the day, so Shane counted that as a win. There was only one downfall. Having no one else to discuss such a huge revelation with meant Devon’s curiosity and suppressed terror was eating her alive. And she had more than a few follow-up queries that demanded to be settled.

So, it was as he sipped on his second coffee that morning that Shane watched Devon pace back and forth in front of the board-room table where he was seated. If he wanted any hope of surviving the barrage of questions, he would be on to his third cup well within in the next fifteen minutes.

“So, let me get this straight. You’re here because—I can’t believe I’m saying this—the Embassy of the Infernal Regions let you into the mortal world?” Devon asked as she trod the carpet to threads. “As in, the embassy of _Hell_?”

“Pretty much,” said Shane in a bored monotone. He had his elbow propped up on the table and his chin in his hand. “It’s the only way I can get in or out of there. Technically, demons aren’t supposed to roam free terrorising the human population without approval. The demons you’re thinking of—the bad ones—are rogues. They weren’t forged in Hell; they were born through human cruelty and suffering. They just tend to give the rest of us a bad rep ‘cause, you know, they’re assholes.”

“So, that demon that was supposed to have infested the church in Solano…”

“Probably would have been one of those, yeah, but I don’t know for sure because it wasn’t there. What we were dealing with all along was the Ambassador. I suspect he cleared the place out of all its spirits right before we rocked up because he’s over dramatic and didn’t think that maybe he would need some reinforcements. I’m sure he won’t make that mistake next time.”

“Jesus.” Devon grabbed at a fistful of her blow-waved hair. “And this—this Ambassador guy. Is he like the Devil and that’s just one of his other names like…” she dropped her voice to a cautious whisper, “…Lucifer, or Beelzebub?”

“No.” Shane waved a dismissive hand. “Not even close. It’s in his name. He’s literally the ambassador that resides in the Embassy of the Infernal Regions. He’s a diplomat—kind of. Him and his goons answer to the guy you know as Lucifer but I’ve never seen him get involved in fieldwork. Fieldwork was supposed to be a job for someone like me. Or, that’s what I thought.” Shane sat back in his chair and raked his fingers through his hair. “Then again, I haven’t been sure of anything lately. I mean, one second he says he’s going to leave Ryan alone; the next, he’s gearing up to dismember him or something.”

“Well, from what you’ve told me, I don’t think he ever necessarily promised he would leave Ryan alone. Just that he would let you do his dirty work.” Devon continued pacing but her inability to keep still was making Shane dizzy. He focused on the fine, spider-webbed cracks decorating his battered, old mug. “Also, so I’m clear,” she added, “you said he wants to expose you; is that right?”

“Yes,” said Shane.

“Because he thinks that will somehow divert everyone’s attention from the fact that the supernatural _does_ exist?

Shane looked up. “Oh, no. He only wants Ryan to know.”

“Oh…” Devon scratched the back of her head. “Okay. You’ve lost me. Does he realise you’re on camera almost constantly?”

“Not an issue. He can interfere with the equipment and cut audio and visual like he did at the Winchester House. Besides, who says he has to try it while we’re on a shoot? It could be any time. It could be today.” At last, comprehending his precarious state of existence, Devon stared at him in shock but had nothing to say. Shane continued, “It sounds contradictory but what he wants is for Ryan to see what I am, shit himself, and then cancel the show out of insanity-inducing fear, thereby keeping my world a secret from yours. I don’t think proving that the supernatural exists is part of his plan. But it _is_ part of mine.”

Devon stopped pacing and braced the table so she was facing him square on. She tapped her nails on the table as she pondered.

“I think I get it. What he did at the mission was his way of forcing you to reveal yourself,” she said. “If he thought you were determined to keep this secret from everyone, but even more determined to keep Ryan from being harmed, then threatening him was the Ambassador’s way of calling your bluff. He wanted you to race in there, guns blazing, or demon face…flaming—”

“That’s definitely not how that works.”

“—Whatever! —so that Ryan would see you for what you truly are like I did. You would have done it of your own free will.”

“Which he knew would piss me off…”

“And I bet the fact that he almost succeeded while practically torturing you with worry was probably the icing on the cake.”

Shane leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. “But he didn’t succeed,” he reminded her, “because as soon as he even got close to Ryan, he started melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“I mean…I couldn’t see what you saw, but I would think that’s because you were protecting Ryan,” Devon pointed out.

“But I wasn’t anywhere near him. I don’t actually know how I did that.”

She threw her hands in the air in a shrug. “Who cares? It worked, didn’t it? Ryan’s fine and that’s all that matters.”

“Uh, I care. What if I have to do it again and I can’t?”

Devon’s assuredness faltered and they both fell into an abrupt, troubled silence. Thinking, Shane closed his eyes and premonition-like images flashed behind the blank canvass of his eyelids. The Ambassador. Hell’s army. Ryan screaming as some demonic agent reached inside and sucked the soul out of him—Shane helpless to stop any of it. His eyes snapped open again and he shuddered.

“What do we do, then?” Devon asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” said Shane. “My original plan was to basically make a joke out of everything Ryan was saying. Enough that people would see how crazy he sounded and stop watching. The show would tank, the company would sweep it under the rug as another failed project, and my work would be done.”

“Right.” Devon grimaced. “You kind of had the opposite effect there.”

“I didn’t mean to. I mean come on, this is a lot of work.”

Devon smirked and rolled her eyes. “So much work,” she agreed.

“And none I intended to do in the first place. Although…I guess I’d be lying if I said what came of it hasn’t been fun, even if it is a bit of a cold comfort now. We’re too far gone. There’s too much attention on us for me to shut it down. It’s completely out of my hands.”

Devon’s face fell once more. “You’re right. The executives would never approve discontinuing it unless the reasons were extreme and insurmountable. Maybe we just have to stop doing the on-site investigations.”

“Yeah, you try getting that past Ryan. Good luck,” Shane chuckled ruefully. “Those investigations are a staple. You take that away, we lose half the viewership. I’m telling you, no one wants to watch two knuckleheads sit at a table and argue for a half hour.”

Devon rose a brow. “I think you would be surprised by what people are willing to waste their time on. But no, I do think it would disrupt things too much. The Supernatural segment doesn’t work without the site visits. I just don’t know what else to do.”

Drumming his fingers against the table, Shane reached for his mug and drank the rest of its lukewarm contents. At the bottom, a dark sediment of ground coffee swirled around, clouding the residue until he stopped moving the mug let the dregs settle.

“Who says we have to do anything?” he said, the note of an epiphany in his tone. “Why should we stop?”

Devon’s eyes widened in disbelief. “How about we’re meddling in things far beyond our understanding. That’s a pretty good reason.”

Shane lifted a finger. “Beyond _your_ understanding.” 

“Same difference. I don’t even want to think of the consequences this could have.”

Shane settled his chin back in his hand and cracked an amused grin. “You talking about eternal damnation?”

“Uh, yeah, obviously!”

“Dev, that’s not gonna happen. Not to you. Do you know what Hell actually is?

Devon straightened from where she had been bracing against the table and shifted uncomfortably. “I thought I did…but judging by your tone I’m not so sure.”

“Hell has a couple of different purposes,” started Shane, clasping his hands together. “The first, and most infamous, is that it’s a place of merciless punishment. For some people, yes, Hell will become a living nightmare; a place where they have to relive their most deplorable actions for the rest of eternity and receive the appropriate retribution.”

The colour drained from Devon’s face.

“But…it’s other purpose is that it’s a place of atonement. It’s a place where people come to terms with the wrongs they’ve done in their lives, see them for what they were, and work to redeem themselves. Like most work it’s not easy, but eventually, they do move on. Only the very worst of humanity earn themselves a permanent spot in the ‘eternal inferno’. And I’m telling you right now, you’re not going to be one of them.”

“But I’m still—”

“Doing the best you can to help your friends under the circumstances,” Shane interrupted.  “You’re helping me help Ryan.”

Devon nodded slowly, though there was still a flighty look in her eyes. “Okay. Okay, I guess so. But I’m still not exactly sure _how_ this helps.”

Shane rose from his seat and rounded the table. “When the time comes that Ryan finds out exactly who I am and what I’m doing here—and it will come eventually, make no mistake—I want him to be prepared. I want him to know what he’s dealing with, and maybe even help him understand that what scares him is not something he needs to be afraid of. But I’m starting to think that maybe I might not be able to do it alone.”

Shane stopped in front of Devon and reached out his hand.

“So, what do you say: will you help me?”

Devon appraised him, considering, contemplating. She looked down at his outstretched fingers. With a deep breath, she reached for his hand, clasped it in her own and shook it.

“I’m in.”

 

=/=

 

Shane and Devon didn’t have much of an opportunity to chat after their impromptu meeting. All energies were directed towards organising their next expedition to Yuma Territorial Prison that coming Wednesday, a looming date which seemed to roll around much sooner than anticipated. Ryan all but disappeared as he conferred with his team of researchers and perfected his script. Given recent complications, Shane thought this was probably for the best. Though contrary to his assumptions, the Ambassador left neither sign nor whisper that he was watching either one of them. It left a bitter taste in Shane’s mouth. ‘No news’ didn’t always mean ‘good news’ when it came to the Ambassador and his delegates.

When Wednesday did arrive, it came with the blistering, hot climes of Arizona. The crew had been driving almost five hours with TJ at the helm and their legs were starting to cramp. The sight of their cheap motel shimmering feverishly with the heat that radiated from its bricks was almost cause for celebration. Almost.

“God damn this place is gonna be like an oven tonight,” said TJ.

“Yeah, nice going, Devon,” Mark jibed, only half-serious in his sarcasm.

“Well, I was a little preoccupied this week, so sorry I couldn’t scrounge for some fancy five-star hotel on our budget,” Devon retorted.

“Yeah but even three stars would have done it,” Ryan muttered from the back seat where he was squashed in with Shane. They both snickered. Though Shane harboured a small amount of guilt on his part. Upon pulling into the parking lot, the five of them stumbled out of the car and were greeted by a wave of stifling hot air. Ryan squinted and shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun with his hand.

“Holy balls, I’m already sweating,” he said.

“Like a sinner in church,” Shane agreed through a yawn as he stretched out.

Ryan looked over to him and scoffed. “Bullshit. How are you still wearing your jacket?”

“Hm? Oh, right that.” Shane hastily pulled it off and slung it over his shoulder. “Didn’t notice it in the car.” Thankfully, Ryan seemed to shrug off Shane’s indifference rather than spend too long questioning why he wasn’t bothered by the heat in the slightest.

“Alright,” said Devon, “they’re not expecting us over at the prison till seven, so—”

“Who wants to help find the least crappy pizza Yuma has to offer?” TJ cut in. Ryan and Mark both raised their hands. Shane agreed to stay behind and help Devon unload the car while she checked them all in.

“What’s the plan for tonight?” she asked Shane when they were both inside one of their three rooms.

“Just do what you usually do,” said Shane. “All we’re doing is treating it like a another shoot.”

“And if the Ambassador shows up?”

“Get everyone out as fast as you can.”

“Okay, got it,” said Devon lightly pumping her fists to psych herself up, much to Shane’s bemusement. Then she frowned. “How will I know if he’s there?”

Shane shrugged. “I think you’ll know, but I’ll give you a signal.”

“Like what?”

Shane briefly scratched his chin in thought and demonstrated his suggestion by cooing like a pigeon. There was a quiet, awkward stretch where Devon bit her lip.

“Subtlety really isn’t your strong suit, is it?”

 

=/=

 

When the sun went down, the heat of the day could still be felt, baked into asphalt and absorbed by clay. The air inside Yuma Territory Prison was thick and heavy like molasses and the smell of it had a fetidness that couldn’t quite be placed. Ryan and Shane walked the decrepit passages of cell blocks with their crew in tow, and as Shane expressed his fascination at the histories of hardened Wild West criminals, he imagined Ryan must have felt uncomfortable.

Mostly because Ryan wouldn’t shut up about it.

“I think my skin is on fire,” he said, which was his fiftieth iteration of that statement.

“Not yet, but that can certainly be arranged,” Shane quipped with false brightness. Ryan ignored him, forging ahead as they made their way back to the front gates of the prison.

“Seriously, as if this place wasn’t bleak enough, it could probably roast you alive.”

“Yeah, reminds me of home.”

At this, Ryan couldn’t help but react and regarded Shane with a quizzical look. “Sure…your hometown was like a prison built in the late nineteenth century by the hands of its convicts.” 

Shane chuckled and shot Devon, who was observing him in mild concern, a grin. “Not in the nineteenth century, but yeah, something like that.”

They soon reached the gates of gridded iron, once the site of a barbaric riot that claimed the lives of four people. It had patches rusting in some places but otherwise, it was well maintained. The only aspect of the gloomy scene that threw Shane for a loop was the ghoul sitting on the ground against the wall of the pass. He was dressed in the tatters of a prisoner’s uniform and had a lost look about him like he wasn’t aware that, even if the gate wasn’t open, he could have walked straight out. Shane had seen this kind of despair before. It was the mien spirits acquired when they couldn’t figure out what was left for them to do in order to move on to that next place. They resigned themselves to limbo and watched as the world aged without them.

The ghostly prisoner appeared content to mind his own business. Short of a brief nod of respect to Shane, he made no indication of caring if they joined him beneath the lone fluorescent light. Although, Shane thought he might have seen a flicker of pride in the ghoul’s face when Ryan recounted the grittier details of a confrontation between an inmate and a superintendent.

“Is there anyone out here who would like to speak with us?” Ryan asked. “I know four of you lost your lives here during an event that was quite violent. Is there anyone who would like to make their presence known that has anything to say? Maybe some unfinished business?”

Though the ghoul’s eyes darted between the two of them in a detached sort of way, he did nothing to accept Ryan’s offer. So, Shane tried his luck.

“A riot, huh?” he prompted. “You guys must have been pretty angry. I know I would be if some jerk-off guard started throwing snakes in my cell.” His efforts worked to no avail.

“This is where, I guess, a majority of the conflict happened. Some of these pri—” Ryan’s voice cut off as they heard a series of solid footsteps coming from somewhere outside the arch of the gate. It wasn’t just them. Both TJ and Mark craned their necks to see out into the shadowy parking lot. Devon, especially, was on high alert. Shane himself would have remained unperturbed—if the ghoul had not started at the exact same moment they did.

“Did you hear that?” Shane asked.

Ryan tilted his head back and took a deep breath, the way he always did when trying rein in his wild imagination. “Yeah, I did,” he replied, “but I know you’re humouring me right now…”

“I’m not humouring you,” said Shane. Perhaps it was the guarded edge to his voice, but for once, Ryan appeared to believe him.

“Okay. Let’s go check it out.” Ryan began to call out as he walked away. Mark made to follow him with the camera.

Shane cocked his brow at their spectral companion as if to ask, “Do you know who it was?” The ghoul gazed up at him and slowly shook its head in reply. Where there had once been a vacancy in its eyes, there was now fear. Devon cleared her throat, garnering Shane’s attention, but he refused to give her the signal just yet. Not until he knew what was really going on.

“That was a pretty distinct footstep over there,” said Ryan, already outside the gate. Upon registering that Shane was yet to follow, he called back, “You’re gonna make me go by myself?”

“No, I’m coming.” Shane trudged over to join him, leaving the spooked ghoul behind. Bolstered by their strength in numbers, Ryan resumed reaching out to their other visitant.

“Hello?”

“Where’s that ghoul here?”

Neither of them received an answer. They stood together in the middle of the empty parking lot with nothing but chirping crickets surrounding them.

“What the fuck was that?” Ryan asked softly, frozen to the spot and staring fixedly into empty air.

“Yeah, that was curious,” Shane agreed. “Did you hear it again? What’s going on with you? You’ve got the funny eyes.”

Ryan shushed him, much to Shane’s amusement. However, at that same moment, they heard the footsteps again, coming from somewhere behind them. They both started and spun on the spot, and passed quick glances to each other. Though Ryan made no attempt to hide his fear, Shane was loath to admit to himself that he felt unease creeping its way into his heart.

“It was closer that time,” said Shane.

“Who’s there?!” Ryan lifted his torch to shine the beam as far as it would reach. “We know you’re there. We heard you.”

“Maybe it’s shy.”

“Oh, sure,” said Ryan, sparing no amount of sarcasm, “and maybe I’m actually a serial killer named Ricky Goldsworth.”

“Eh, I think the jury’s still out on that one.”

They passed another minute, watching and waiting. They had to be satisfied there was nothing else lurking out there before Ryan lowered his torch and turned back to the gates—though ironically enough, Shane was not so easily convinced.

“Alright,” Ryan called out over his shoulder, “we’re gonna leave but one again, we’ll be here all night. Just tonight though, ‘cause we’re not locked up—we’re law-abiding citizens.”

“Oh yeah, sure you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ryan asked, curling his lip in a frown.

Shane chuckled and gave a dismissive shrug. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

Though Shane, Ryan, and even the rest of the crew kept their eyes and ears open, the remainder of their tour passed without any further visitation from the phantom with two lead feet. There were still ghosts lurking, wandering in and out of cells like flotsam and jetsam drifting in the tide, but these ghosts, much like the one just inside the gate, were content to keep to themselves. Suffice to say it was odd, considering most of them had led such sordid lives.

Even the spirit of John Ryan was little more than dismissive when Shane and Ryan arrived to investigate his cell. He grumbled, sure. What kind of spirit wouldn’t balk at the thought of having their peace disturbed by a lanky diabolic entity and his overly earnest companion? But in the end, to Shane’s private dismay, the only evidence Ryan left with was an inconclusive whisper that barely showed up as an EVP.

Things were a little different over in the guard tower, however.

Patrolling the parapets surrounding the prison were the incorporeal figures of half a dozen ghostly guards. In the main tower, more congregated; a peace-keeping force of the dead. Their faces were hardened. Their expressions impassive and void of emotion. For a second, Shane thought they might have accidentally fallen through a tear in the time-space continuum for how seriously they were taking up their posts.

“Well this looks fun,” said Shane as he, Ryan and Mark began their ascent up the creaky wooden stairs. TJ and Devon remained on the ground.  

“I know! This is actually really cool,” said Ryan.

Shane blinked in confusion. “Hang on, what?” he asked, wondering if Ryan had spontaneously acquired the ability to see the paranormal with his own eyes. No; that was impossible. He would have been on the ground in the foetal position by now.

“This is the first time we’ve ever been in a guard tower,” Ryan explained. “We’ve been to so many prisons and we’ve never been in a guard tower.”

“Oh, I see what you’re saying.”

“What were you talking about?”

“Same thing as you.”

They reached the landing. The response from the guards of centuries passed was immediate. Every head tuned in their direction, each face etched with a dirty glare. If Ryan could have seen the kind of scorpion’s nest he was walking into, he would have bolted for the hills.

“Check out the view from up here,” he said to Shane as he crossed over to the parapet, much to the displeasure of ghost he passed through. The grounds of the prison campus sprawled out beneath them, illuminated in dismal patches and otherwise shrouded in shadow. Looking out to the south, the town of Yuma glimmered like a patchwork of yellow streetlights. To the north, they could just make out the inky Colorado River that snaked by the prison and disappeared beneath Penitentiary Avenue.

“Here’s their view of the gates,” Shane added, pointing down to the entrance.

“Exactly, this is the view they would have had,” said Ryan as he pulled out the spirit box from where it hung on his belt. “Should we do a session?”  

“Let’s reach out. I wouldn’t mind hearing what they’ve got to say for themselves.”

An ear-splitting crackle of white noise quickly transitioned to a garbled grunt of incomplete words, something incomprehensible, even by Ryan’s standards. Though it did not fail to startle him. He proceeded with an amicable preamble and Shane did the honours of introducing them both. The spirit box only glitched. None of the guards were making any attempt to meet them halfway at the dimensional barrier. It was almost like they were trying to be spiteful.

Come to think of it, for a place teeming with outspoken souls, all the spirits had been rather unresponsive all night…

“You know,” Shane began candidly as suspicion built in the back of his mind, “I’ll bet some of you were decent guys just trying to cash a check. But some of you were probably real ass-wipes.”

_FUCK YOU_

Ryan flinched away from the spirit box in his hand. His mouth dropped open. “Holy—”

“Huh? What’d you say to me?!” Shane shouted at the device. “Speak up!”

The spirit box and the surrounding guards fell silent once again. But their fury in their eyes could have made a grown man weep.

“That’s what I thought,” said Shane, wearing a scowl of his own.

“Holy shit, dude, I don’t think offending whoever’s here is gonna make them less angry,” said Ryan.

Shane straightened his spine and squared his shoulders in a fit of indignation. “Well, I’m sorry, but I thought this was a tower full of people who knew what they were doing!” The steady beat of endless white noise suddenly jumped and chattered; a byproduct of the captain of the guard cursing at Shane and taking aim with his rifle. “What did you say?” he challenged. “Speak up!”

The captain sealed his lips in a rigid line of blatant defiance. And with that, Shane’s suspicions were confirmed. Much like the rest of the prison’s inhabitants, there was a reason the spirits surrounding him and Ryan had yet to truly make themselves known. This spectral squadron, who as a collective so clearly wanted to have the final word after Shane’s verbal dressing down, were under strict instructions not to yield. They were to stay on guard. Silent but vigilant. Their one retaliation had been but a moment of weakness. And Shane only needed one guess to figure out whose orders they were following.

“Coward! Cowards! All of you! You hear me?”

“Jesus Christ,” Ryan breathed.

“You’re cowards!”

How? _How_ had the Ambassador known Shane’s plan? It had been kept from all but one person and a mortal at that. Yet here was an entire prison and its captives from yore who all seemed to know (and were determined to deny) Shane what he desperately needed of them.

“Do we…need to take five?” Ryan asked him, aside from all pretence.

“No,” said Shane. What he needed was to think.

Apparently, the Ambassador had either figured out what he was plotting, or there was someone who had infiltrated Shane’s life and was feeding information back to the embassy. So, why, therefore, hadn’t the Ambassador come to confront the problem himself? This particular man—if he could even be called that—was not one to beat around the bush. Nothing but a course of direct action ever sufficed and in the absence of a reliable delegate, he had made it quite clear how prepared he was to step in and turn the tides in his favour himself. But this time, the Ambassador had left an army of ghouls to do his bidding instead. That in itself was an interesting notion, given his need for control, but it was not the only thought that sent a sudden thrill of hope through Shane’s veins:

Ghouls were not demons.

Though in a hierarchical sense they were far less powerful than demons, that power was not binding or contractual. Ghouls did not bend to a superior will in the same way. Their loyalty was fallible. It could be broken if one was clever enough—or bold enough, as Shane often was.

But above all, it meant that for now at least, the Ambassador was too weak to fight back on his own.

For now, Shane was the victor.

And he was the one trapped in a mortal body.

Realising that Ryan was staring at him as though he had completely lost touch with reality, Shane schooled his elation into a more neutral expression. Perhaps for the benefit of the ghouls he believed in but could not see, Ryan said to Mark behind the camera, “This is the kind of man that you shouldn’t be pushed around by.”

“I’m strange and off-putting!” said Shane, if only to confirm Ryan’s claim. As he did so, he looked every single ghost guard that dared challenge him in the eyes. “I should not feel confident in the face of any man.”

“Yet here you are, smiling in the face of the Devil,” said Ryan.

“Because I have triumphed once again!”

 

=/=

 

As Shane soon came to realise, however, victory in one arena did not necessarily mean victory in another. He may have proven to the Ambassador that his will was a force to be reckoned with, but imposing that will on a band of wily, begrudging ghouls was a feat not even he could achieve that night. For the rest of their miserable visit to Yuma Territorial Prison, Shane and Ryan found very little evidence pertaining to the paranormal. Their lone ventures to the so-called “snake den” did nothing to help their case—yes; it was _their_ case now. And Shane was going to fight tooth and nail to see it through.

The crew returned to the motel weary and in hollow spirits, each for reasons unbeknownst to the others. Before they split off into their rooms for the night, Devon caught Shane’s eye in a glance he deciphered instantly. He saw her relief that their night had been, for the most part, free of inexplicable hauntings. And yet…there was disappointment. The thrill of the chase had lured her in. The anticipation, the apprehension of the unknown had her hooked—even if she hadn’t realised it yet. Shane bit back a rueful chuckle.

_Yeah, welcome to the club, Dev._

It was a confusing sentiment, after all; wanting so badly for something to happen, yet being terrified that when it did, nothing would ever be the same again.

In their shared room at long last, Shane let the door swing shut with a satisfying thud while Ryan went and fetched them both beers from the mini-fridge. The smell of the room was a little musty, as most motel rooms were. But neither of them thought to complain. Anything was an improvement over the reek of a bat-infested prison cell in the middle of the desert. Although, as he looked around, Shane was noticing the room in a way he hadn’t that afternoon. The space was clearly a product of convenience, with its two beds, one bathroom, and one armchair between them. However, for an agent of the diabolic trying to maintain a secret identity, these features made the room decidedly _in_ convenient. Shane’s imminent knowledge that he would be holed up with Ryan, trapped in those four walls for the next eight hours, made it feel too compact. Almost claustrophobic.

All it would take was one ill-fated slip-up, one moment where he was not constantly vigilant, and all would be for naught.

For a second, Shane considered bolting next door. Perhaps rooming with Devon and sleeping on the floor if he had to. But then, Ryan passed him that ice-cold beer and mentioned something about the latest _Mission Impossible_ , and suddenly all was right with the world. They shifted into an easy conversation, where topics of film, friends and family ebbed and flowed, and rolled into one. The trials of the day were forgotten. The fears in them both were laid to rest.

Until Ryan asked, “What do you think those footsteps were, really?”

From where he lounged on a mound of pillows, Shane shot Ryan a derisive look and took a swig of his beer.

“Seriously?” Ryan leaned forward in the armchair across the room and braced his elbows against his knees. “That didn’t sound like anything to you?” Shane lifted his hand in what appeared to be a nonchalant shrug. But in his head, he was choosing his words with the utmost care.

“It sounded like something,” he admitted eventually.

“Ah-ha!”

“ _But_ …I don’t know what,” Shane added, and that was the bona fide truth. Ryan pursed his lips and sighed through his nose.

“Don’t you ever get tired, playing this role? You know, Mary-Mary-Quite-Contrary?”

“Not when my garden grows,” he said before raising his bottle and downing the last dregs of his drink.

“What does that mean?” Ryan laughed.

“I’m not contrary; I’m just right.”

Ryan gave a half-smirk. “Yeah,” he said. “Right.” Stifling a yawn, he settled into the back of his chair and closed his eyes. Shane could feel his own drooping shut as fatigue caught up to them both. 

“I’m glad you don’t think I’m totally crazy on this,” Ryan murmured. Shane’s eyes flicked back open.

“I don’t,” he said. Then he chuckled. “Well, not totally. I believe you know what you heard.”

Seldom was there a unanimous conclusion to their debates. Even rarer were the times those debates ended amicably. But that seemed to be enough for Ryan, who nodded sleepily and rose from his seat, then shuffled over to Shane, took his empty bottle, and deposited both by the sink. The thing was, Shane found he could not dismiss the unexplainable so easily anymore. Not if he wanted to fortify Ryan’s beliefs rather than dash them. His task going forward would be to tread the fine line between skeptic and believer, much as it always had. Except this time would be a little different. This time Shane had a new agenda on side with the believers. Not that Ryan needed to know.

Not yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We can all agree that the "STRANGE AND OFF-PUTTING" thing was weird as hell but too good not to include, right?


	4. Ryan: The First Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't going to write anything for last week's episode and, technically, I haven't. But given that there will only be six episodes this season with the finale coming this Friday (very sad, I had no idea until three days ago), I don't think I can afford to leave this one out, however short and rushed it may be. 
> 
> FYI, these last two or so chapters may take a little longer given that I will be trying to wrap everything up, so please bear with me. However, you may be treated to a couple of bonus chapters so keep your eyes peeled. 
> 
> Once again, thank you to those lovely readers who went the extra mile and left a comment. It makes me so happy to hear from you.

The mouth of the door yawned open, a black, abyssal maw that plunged down into the belly of a dormant giant. From within came a sigh of fetid, musty air. The teeth of a jagged staircase descended from the lip of the threshold, fading into shadow until the last discernible foothold dropped away into oblivion.

And like an idiot, Ryan placed one booted foot on the top step to begin his descent.

Of all the troubling features the Winchester mansion boasted, this had to be one of the worst. For unlike the quagmire of passages, anomalous doors and dead-end staircases that comprised the architectural abomination, this staircase actually led somewhere: the basement.  

Each breath Ryan took was a struggle against the camera strapped too tightly to his chest and the dense cloud of dust settling in his lungs. Every cell in his body, every fibre of his being was screaming at him: _Turn back. Turn back NOW. Jesus fucking Christ, you moron._ Yet, the all-consuming voice of fear—the one that, arguably, had a pretty dismal success rate of steering him away from perilous situations—was trumped by the other nagging voice that turned the needle of his moral compass.

Ryan had adopted but one hard and fast rule when it came to pursuing the paranormal: when your best friend failed to return from a solo venture to the depths of a haunted basement, you gritted your teeth, clenched your butt-cheeks, and went in after him. No ifs. No buts. No matter if he just screwing with you. That was not a chance you took. The Ghoul Boys were a package deal and left no man behind.

With the faint rectangle of light, his only exit, high above him, Ryan jutted out his chin and took in a shaky breath as he surveyed his surrounds, trying to summon some semblance of courage. His feet made no noise against the concrete ground. Odd…there should have been an echo in such an empty space.

…Right?

No; focus. Eerie acoustics or lack thereof was not important. He had to find Shane. Straining his eyes against the dark, Ryan edged his way into the subterranean maze.

“Shane?”

Ryan heard his fearfully-affected voice and scarcely believed he had opened his mouth at all. It sounded too detached. Like the way the crack of a fired shot took too long to reach a distant ear. 

“Shane,” he repeated, “did you hear me? It’s been ten minutes. Man, I swear to God, if you’re messing with me…you know I hate this. But I’m here. Coming to collect your sorry ass. I said that if anything ever happened, I would try and save you. I’m hoping that’s not the case but I’m a man of my—”

_Schhhht._

Ryan spun on his heel with a rush of blood thundering in his ears. The beam of his headlamp whirled around the room in a flash with him, scantly illuminating the dark tunnels and cold passages that radiated in a spider’s web from the place he was standing. He heard something. A rustle. Or the scrape of something being dragged against the gritty pavement.

“I’m losing it. I’m going out of my goddamn mind,” Ryan whispered. Then a breath ghosted over his shoulder. Something brushed against his arm. He flinched with a sharp yelp, his chest heaved. “Is—is there someone else down here?” he croaked. “…Shane?”

_Get out._

The hiss pierced Ryan’s ear, distorted. So distorted, in fact, that he could have pretended it was a figment of his wired imagination. Still. His heart leapt into his throat. “Who was that?” he mouthed, his voice had all but failed him. In its place, the urge to scream rose in his lungs. But he wouldn’t give in to fear. He couldn’t. He had to find Shane. He promised—

**_GET OUT!_ **

This time, Ryan did scream. His terror ripped into the empty air, any scrap of tentative heroism gone.

Wrenching himself out of his paralysed state, Ryan sprinted back the way he had come. Past crumbling pillars. Past strange alcoves. The fine strings of spiderwebs he raced through laced themselves over his face and limbs in a shudder-inducing shroud. But though he pumped his legs until his calves and quads burned, he may as well have been wading through quicksand. Each step felt as though it dragged further and further behind him. He could sense the owner of the menacing whisper gaining. He didn’t need to glance over his shoulder to know.

No matter.

He was almost home free and the steps were right…

“ _No_.” Ryan skidded to a halt and looked around, chest heaving as he struggled against hyperventilation. The network of passages had shifted. This wasn’t where he had started, though he knew he had retraced his steps. He had.

…Hadn’t he?

The chilling realisation that Ryan had somehow lost his way sent a new wave of ice-cold fear shooting into his every artery, vein and capillary. At that same moment, the scrape, the crunch of something underfoot came somewhere from his left. He clamped a shaking hand over his mouth and emitted a low, sickened moan. It was right there. Watching him. Watching him watching it. Ryan backed away, one, two three steps, and collided with his back against the cold, slick surface of a concrete wall. There was nowhere else to run. All he could do was watch in horror as a face materialised from the ink of the shadows, etched by an erratic hand in severe angles and sharp lines.

A face that he knew.

Ryan blinked.

Then blinked again.

Red, tartan shirt rolled up to his elbows; the cuffs of his dark jeans tucked into his boots; pointed chin; lanky limbs.

It was Shane.

It was just Shane.

“Oh, my GOD!” Ryan exclaimed, doubling over, gasping. “Oh, my God, I hate you so much. Jesus. You scared the living—I think I’m having a stroke.”

Breathe in, he told himself, breathe out. It was over, clearly a practical joke, and it was over. There was nothing to fear. He may have lost himself in the dark for a minute there; gazed long into the abyss until the abyss gazed into him. But as Shane always said, he had worked himself up over nothing.

Except…Shane wasn't saying anything this time. There was no light-hearted jibe in response. No derisive bit at the expense of his dignity—not that Ryan had much to begin with. Ryan lifted his head and looked up. Shane was already staring back with unblinking eyes.

“Dude. Are you listening to me? It’s been…” Ryan paused and his nervous chuckle faded. How long had it been, really? Why did he feel as though time was folding in on itself—or stretching out? Why did everything look and feel so fuzzy? Why wasn’t there a way out?

“It doesn’t matter,” Ryan said, more to himself than to Shane. “Your time is up.”

“Ryan, you need to leave.”

“Yeah, your ten minutes finished a long…” Ryan’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Wait, what?”

“You need to leave,” Shane said urgently, again, “now.”

Ryan narrowed his eyes and looked, really looked at what was right in front of him. Shane’s face was drawn. Resigned. In the feeble light of Ryan’s headlamp, stark shadows carved Shane’s face into something gaunt, verging on the unfamiliar. Verging on the uncanny.

“What are you talking about?” Ryan asked. His pulse picked up its pace, drummed in his ears, once again making it sound as though he was hearing his own voice and everything around him through water. “I’m not leaving you down here. Just come back.”

“I can’t.” Shane looked to his feet with his face etched in a tight grimace. “I can’t do it anymore.”

“Can’t do what?” Ryan tried to step forward and cross the distance between them. His feet were glued to the floor. What he was hearing was a vacancy to Shane’s words. An absence that he now realised had stolen his friend long before this moment. He just hadn’t thought to notice. “Come on, man, you’re starting to creep me out a little. I’m…”

There was a pregnant pause as Ryan hesitated.

“I’m scared.” 

Shane’s eyes snapped up. For a second Ryan thought he saw a flash of remorse. But it disappeared as Shane’s face began to transform. his mouth twisted into a snarl as volatile and dangerous as a tempest. His cheekbones sharpened with little ridges. A tongue flicked over his lower lip, thin and forked. And as the sockets around his eyes darkened with spidery veins that turned from red to purple to charcoal grey, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were blacker than obsidian stones.    

Yes,” said Shane. “You should be.”

  

Ryan jolted awake with his heart pounding. The end of his own horrified cry rang in his ears. He lay frozen, gripping the sheets in his fists out of sheer panic until he willed them to loosen and relax. Slowly, then all at once, the last dregs of the nightmare slipped from his mind, a vicious mental sludge that left him feeling cold. Or perhaps that chill was that was from the pool of his own perspiration. While slightly gross and a little unnerving, the state Ryan had woken in didn’t entirely surprise him; this wasn't the first time a nightmare had sent him into near-cardiac arrest.

With a groggy groan, Ryan scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up. He reached over to the bedside table where his phone was charging to wake the lock screen. Through the glare, he squinted.

3:04 am.

“Perfect…” he muttered.

As his heart rate lowered to a less frantic tattoo, Ryan slowly reoriented himself with his gloomy surrounds. A cramped room. Generic, impersonal decor. Twin beds. A window cracked open to let in whatever fresh air existed in a climate where nights averaged 78 degrees*. Yep; he was still in Arizona all right.

And Shane was still fast asleep on the other side of the room.

A brief fragment of the nightmare flashed in Ryan’s mind again, reminding him of the disturbing likeness his brain had concocted. He blinked it away. It wasn’t real. No matter how many times that _thing_ posing as his friend came to haunt his dreams—which had been a lot in past few weeks, much to Ryan’s dismay—it was but a figment of his fearful imagination.

…That being said, it probably wouldn’t hurt to get a blessing once they returned home.

A loud grunt startled Ryan out of his musings. He trained his sights back on Shane as Shane, rather ungracefully, shifted in his sleep. Not that his new position could have been any more comfortable than before. As a bean-pole of a man self-proclaimed to be “80% leg”, Shane had apparently given up the fight of trying to fit all six feet and four inches of himself on the single mattress and sprawled himself out, somehow lying on his back and side at the same time. His legs dangled over the edge of his bed and one of his arms was flung above his head. Not to mention, his mouth hung open in a surprised little “O” as he snored softly.

Very intimidating. Now there was a monster who could send a shiver down the spine of the Devil himself.

Ryan suppressed a snicker and took a small, albeit bemused kind of comfort from the strange picture of his equally strange friend. That was the Shane he knew. Not the…he hesitated to even think of the word; the _demon_ that tortured him night after night in his sleep. Taking care not to make too much noise, Ryan slipped out of his own bed and crossed the room to the kitchenette. From the cupboard above the sink, he fetched a glass, poured himself water from the faucet, and gulped it down.

They had been getting worse, these dreams. What started as an occasional fright in the middle of the night from a faceless figure had become a regularly scheduled appointment. Soon, that figure had given himself a face. And they always met in the basement of the Winchester Mansion. Whether the exacerbation of the nightmares had been caused by his and Shane’s recent return to ‘where it all began,’ Ryan couldn’t say for sure. Correlation didn’t necessarily mean causation. But he had his suspicions.

Ryan set his glass down on the bench. At that same moment, something else sounded, different to the dull clink of a tumbler connecting with a bench top. It came from outside. With his shoulders tensing in suspicion, Ryan crept over to the door and listened.

There it was again. 

A footstep.

Then another. And another. They were moving off, down the length of the walkway. But they didn’t fade the way footsteps usually fade with distance. There wasn’t even the thud of a closing door to signify their owner had gone inside one of the rooms.

They simply stopped.

And Ryan couldn’t help but be reminded of the eerie footsteps he and Shane had heard earlier that evening at the prison. Who was out there? What were they doing? Had it even been a person at all? These questions swirled around Ryan’s head as the evidence of his ears painted a picture he would rather not have seen: the silhouette of a faceless figure standing outside, waiting. For what? For him. Maybe that was what Ryan would find if he gave into the intrusive thought commanding him to open his door. Or maybe he would find nothing at all.

“Stop it,” Ryan hissed to himself. He was losing it again. Obviously still worked up from the adrenaline of before. Whoever it was that owned those footsteps, they had probably, innocuously, just walked away, perhaps down to the reception, perhaps into one of the rooms. He just hadn’t been listening hard enough.

_Yeah, but what creep is walking around a motel at three in the morning?_ he reminded himself.

Though he was never one to shy away from a chance to find evidence of the paranormal, Ryan instead found himself backing away from the door and back over to his bed. He sat down and pulled the sheet over his legs, but he could not lay his unease to rest so easily. Other odd details of their investigation around the prison—and even details of the investigations before it—were bubbling up from the recesses of his memory.

First was how quiet each of their locations had been so far for their shoot this season. They had barely heard anything, even from the spirit box. And when they did, at last, record something, it was so solid, so significant not even Shane could explain it away. That had never happened before.

Stranger still was how Shane invariably riled in the presence of (what he claimed was) nothing at all. As though he was tired of being ignored by the very spirits he belittled and disparaged.

Then there was Shane’s whole existential crisis; how Shane seemed to push Ryan out of places or situations or cut their time short; to deter him from investigating things that, by all accounts, weren't dangerous at all—if you weren’t a believer, that was.

In a fit of sudden inspiration (or insanity, the verdict was still out), Ryan grabbed his phone and punched in the following notes:

 

SHANE MADEJ

**Known**

  * Came late into Unsolved project after Brent left to pursue "other things" (vague explanation)
  * Was present for first on-site investigation to  
         —> Winchester House  
         —> Linked to nightmare thing?
  * We lost him down in the basement the first time when his equipment cut out — lost him again for the second time
  * Immediately tried to fuck with demons from the get-go  
         —> Correlation? ——> Causation??
  * Will eat Cheesy Gordita Crunch = normal
  * Will also eat pickles out of ponds = abnormal
  * ~~Sometimes sounds like an alien?~~
  * Is freakishly tall
  * Large head



**Unknown**

  * Why Brent really left
  * Cause of strange behaviour (Medej-viour?).  
         —> Existential crisis  
         —> Don Vito
  * Why paranormal stuff only tends to happen when Shane is around 
  * Why he is weirdly encouraging of possible supernatural evidence  
         —> Anger/disappointment when ghosts don't comply
  * Emotions???
  * ~~Seriously what even IS he?~~




	5. Shane: The Second Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to apologise. This chapter was/is supposed to be the beginning of Tombstone but I realised, as I was writing, that it really needed to be a chapter all its own. I know a lot of you were waiting for the escapades at the O.K. Corral. I promise they're coming. But a lot of this is me trying to set up for what is to come. Like I said, bear with me and hopefully, it will be worth the wait. 
> 
> You may also have noticed that the number of total chapters has changed. With what I have planned, it's very likely we'll get a couple more of these interludes. I'm afraid two chapters simply won't be enough to wrap everything up (and if they were, they would be way too long).
> 
> Now, due to the silly season and a quick vacation, I won't be able to post the next chapter until after the new year. So don't freak out if you don't see anything new for a few weeks. This story will be done, lest the Mothman fight me for my firstborn :P
> 
> Sorry for the delay and world's longest author's note. But a big thank you once again to everyone who left comments, you made my day!

A sleep steeped in twilight lifted its foggy cloud from Shane’s head, demanding he return to a state of consciousness. Or at least, semi-consciousness. He wrestled with the thin blanket and tugged it in a burrito wrap around his shoulders in denial.

Get up.

Get up

_Get UP._

A new day was a-knocking and it would not be ignored. Grumbling under his breath, he reached for his phone where it lay on the bed-side table, buzzing, and jabbed the screen. The alarm, and its nagging died in an instant.

Silence.

Bliss.

Sleep… his eyes slid closed.

He still had to get out of bed. _Fuck_.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Shane tried to prop himself up on an elbow. But as he lifted his head from the pillow, it dragged against the plaster of the wall with a _scraaape_ that reverberated in his skull. His eyes snapped open.

“Oh, no.”

Heart lodged in his throat, Shane lifted his hand to his crown. The pads of his fingers bushed over hard keratin, like bone.

“ _Shit_.”

Adjacent to Shane’s bed was the bathroom. He lurched to his feet and stumbled across the sharp chill of the tiles inside, his breath escaping him in short rasps. There, through the pristine pane of the mirror, he looked. To his horror, the person that stared back at him was hardly a person at all.

…Okay.

Perhaps he was being a little melodramatic.

The dopplegänger Shane saw was still a “person” in the strictest sense. He had arms and legs, eyes and ears. Heads and shoulders, knees and toes. But most “people” didn’t _also_ sport a pair of horns bestowed upon them by the Devil himself.

A flush of adrenaline warmed Shane’s skin.

Horns. Literal, Hell-sent horns. A mark of the diabolic. Inspired by Lucifer’s halo after it was destroyed when he plunged from the Silver City. One final “fuck you” to the big guy upstairs—so the stories went. Shane ran his hand over one of them from base to tip, felt the texture of their layered ridges and imperfections; the way they curved, curled and tapered well above the puff of his bed-headed hair; their strange but familiar terrain. He knew them like the map of valleys and trenches that creased his own palm. Even their colour was the same as they always had been: mahogany near the roots, which bled into auburn, and crimson in turn. They were still scarred and scraped in places from when he had taken sandpaper to them and tried to erase them out of existence.

And yet, his efforts had been for naught.

How had they come in over-night? It was too soon. He was supposed to have more time.

A tired groan and a sudden loud snore caused Shane’s spine to straighten to a rod. He looked back into the room. Tucked in his own bed, Ryan murmured something in his sleep. His eyelids fluttered. He was beginning to stir. And there Shane was with nothing short of a neon sign pointing to his diabolical identity on full, brazen display.

He needed to escape.

Shane ran for the front door, thinking nothing of shoes or attire beyond his sweats and t-shirt. He scrambled with the handle. Wrenched it open. In his periphery, he heard Ryan croak, “Sha—?” The door slammed shut behind him before he heard the end of his own name. Bathed in the glaring light of a steadily rising Arizonian sun, Shane’s head whipped left to right as he assessed his surrounds. The walkway was deserted. Good; but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. As he tried to think of where to go, he found the answer two rooms down: Devon. Left it was. He crossed the distance in a matter of strides and banged thrice on the paint-chipped door.

“Dev! Wake up. We got a situation out here. Let me in.”

Footsteps shuffled from within. With a click and creak, the door swung open. Bleary eyed and framed by blonde hair as unruly as his own, Devon’s drowsy face greeted him.

“Shane, what’s going —Oh, my God!” A silver spoon slipped from her hand. It spun as it fell in flashes of refracted sunlight and clattered to the ground. Shane kicked it inside and shoved the door closed behind him. He pressed his hands against its cool wood in a slump.

“Shane,” Devon breathed, “is that—are those your…?”

Shane shook his head and held up his hand, signalling for her to please, for the love of everything unholy, not mention the big-ass elephant in the tiny motel room. “That was close,” he sighed. “Way too close.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

The shocked cadence of a man's voice had Shane freeze on the spot and pan his gaze up. Devon, who seemed to only just now remember that they were not, in fact, alone, squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her face into her palm.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” said Shane.

Now there was something he hadn’t accounted for. Less than a few feet away, seated at the little dining bench fitted to the room’s kitchenette, in all his bearded glory, was the stony-faced TJ. He was still in his pyjamas with half a piece of toast hanging out of his slackened mouth. It fell back onto his plate with a dry clink.

“You should have said something,” Devon whispered, peering through a crack in her fingers.

“I was in _peril_ ,” Shane hissed back. “You were decent, I figured that was good enough.”

“You know we sometimes have coffee together on the mornings we stay overnight!”

Shane sealed his lips shut while Devon folded her arms tight over her chest.  There was no point in arguing. What was done was done. They just had to accept the fact that, for an assistant director, TJ had cued himself and chosen to enter the scene of their conspiracy with the worst possible timing.

“Someone see what I’m seeing before I punch myself in the face,” said the man himself.

Even so, this was not the time to stall.

“TJ.” Shane bushed past Devon and edged forward with his hands raised in a gesture of no ill-intent, even though the guy somehow had the stoicism and composure of a goddamn rock. “You’re looking…surprised? Sad? Gassy? I can’t tell.”

TJ said nothing more. He merely held a stare that bored into Shane’s skull.

“Look, I can explain.” Shane swallowed. “Here goes.” The justification was there. Right on the tip of his tongue. And yet the words that fell out of his mouth (or possibly his ass) were: “I’m really into cosplay.”

“Horseshit,” said TJ.

Shane let his hands fall and stopped in his tracks. Fair play. Devon snorted. The expression on TJ’s face did not change.

“April Fools?”

“It’s September. Try again.”

“I don’t know if I want to,” Shane said with genuine hesitance. “Can you just do something with your face so I know you don’t wanna deck me?”

TJ did not. If anything, he fixed his stare even more severely, which struck a fear into Shane’s heart that should not have been possible. He was an emissary sent from Hell. His instincts were not supposed to be saying “fight or flight”. Why couldn’t the guy express fear like a normal person instead of a complete psychopath?

“Alright, here’s the truth.” Shane sighed through his nose and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “So, like, a really long time ago, my mom knew this goat—“

This was too much for Devon, who broke into shrieks of laughter. Shane also couldn’t keep from snickering and the two of them dissolved into hysterical giggles. The situation lost its humour when TJ slowly rose from his seat and started towards them.

“Uh, TJ.” Shane backed away with a nervous laugh. “Teeg. Teeg-monster.” The doorframe jabbed into his spine. There was no other place to retreat. TJ came to a stop right in front of him, his mouth pressed in a mean frown.

“How did you do it?” TJ asked.

“How did I…what?”

“You really had me going for a second there. What is it, paper-mâché? You hit up Party City? Or does Sara know how to make prosthetics now?”

Shane blinked in confusion. “Even if she did, she wouldn’t abuse her talents for a practical joke like…actually she would. That’s not the point. Are you in shock or something?”

“They look pretty real, I’ll give you that,” said TJ. Before Shane realised what was happening, TJ seized him by the horns and yanked.

“AGH!” There was a twinge in his neck. “That’s ‘cause they _are_ real, asshole!”

TJ’s eyes widened. His mouth dropped open. He let go of Shane’s horns as though he had been burned, then stumbled back and away into the kitchenette bench. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “Holy shit, you’re a—you’re a fucking…”

“Okay, let’s just pump the breaks for a second here. Let’s not jump to any rash conclusions,” Shane interrupted. He rubbed his neck with a wince as he righted himself. “I will explain everything but in the meantime, would you reconsider ripping my head from my spine? I mean, come on. I know you’ve got some sort of aesthetic going here but what kind of barbarian are you?”

A warning cough from Devon alerted Shane to TJ’s blanched complexion. Despite his frustration, he felt a tug of compassion for the poor guy. TJ was something of a skeptic, after all. It probably wasn’t… _fun…_ for him to have the entire foundation of his beliefs shattered in one fell swoop.

“Wait, Devon…” TJ turned to look at her, a flicker of realisation in his face. “You know about this.” It wasn’t a question. “When he came in— You _knew_.”

“Um.” Devon chewed her lip.

“How long have you known?”

“A week or so. Pretty much since Solano.”

TJ’s mouth gaped open.

“Yeah, but she wasn’t _supposed_ to find out. And neither were you,” said Shane, exasperated again. “It was an accident.”

“And for good reason,” said Devon. “Most of the time I wish I knew nothing. Those clueless schmucks have no idea how good they’ve got it, being completely oblivious. I, for one, never really wanted to be burdened with the knowledge of what happens to us once we die, but here we are. Welcome to the club, I guess.”

“Holy shit…” TJ groaned.

“Okay, thank you, Devon, I think we’re digressing here. Now, since there’s no point in denying the obvious, yeah, okay.” Shane smoothed his hands over his thighs. “I am what you might call, a “demon”, but no; I’m not here to harm, possess or kill you. Or anyone else. We cool with that?”

Silence.

“Good. I was sent here by my superiors to keep the supernatural realm a secret from you adorably persistent mortals. Arguably, I haven’t quite done my job to an air-tight standard, so now I’m being punished, hence the horns—don’t ponder it too long, it’s complicated. Soon I’ll be back in Hell, torturing wayward souls and, hopefully, helping the ones who want to atone. But before then, there is a very real chance someone on my tail will expose what I am to our old friend Ryan Bergara, because the objective is that he realises what a monster I am and shuts down _Unsolved_ , thereby leaving anything to do with the supernatural alone for as long as he lives.” Shane sucked in a much-needed breath and exhaled. “Are you with me so far?”

“Uh…” TJ looked from Shane to Devon. “I think so? Wait, wait, wait. Ryan doesn’t know? About any of this?”

“No. And he can’t know. Not until I think he can handle it. I’m aware that with the Ambassador lurking around, Ryan learning the truth is inevitable—“

“The who now?”

“—but if I can control how and when that truth comes out, maybe we might not have to cart him off to an institution. Maybe.”

TJ fell silent and stared at him. Shane could practically see the cogs in his head turning as he slotted each piece of information into a place it could be comprehended. “So this is really happening,” he muttered. “It’s all real. All the weird shit that we’ve heard or seen since starting these shoots…”

“Most of them were actual spirits, yes,” Shane admitted with an ironic smile. “Not all. But most.”

“Jesus.”

“I know, it’s a lot to take in.”

“No, it’s not that. I mean, it is a lot but—“ TJ emitted a frustrated grunt as he crossed the room to where his laptop bag was sitting on Devon’s couch. He picked it up, pulled the laptop out, and set it back down on the kitchenette bench. “Last night, Mark and I were uploading and clearing the cameras so we’d have enough memory for the shoot at the O.K. Corral today—no pun intended,” he said as he logged in, fingers flying across the keyboard. “I was going through the footage from the prison as we went and I came across…something. I couldn’t explain it. Neither could Mark.”

“What was it?” asked Devon. Something between hope and dread swooped in Shane’s gut.

“Here. Take a look for yourselves.”

TJ started the media player. Raw footage of a hornless Shane strolling down to the bat-infested “Snake Den” flickered to life, though it was hard to discern details when the shadows blended in a thick sludge of murk.

_“You ready Mark? Got your ghoul stompin’ shoes on? …Maybe a rabies shot just in case?”_ Shane’s wry laughter crackled out of the speakers. On the screen, in the tunnel that led to the den, he turned his head to look back over his shoulder.

_“Yeah, I’m behind you. Go,”_ they heard Mark say off-camera.

_“Okay. I’m walking into the dark—”_

“There.” TJ paused the video. “Did you see that? There was a shadow on the wall in front of you. And then as soon as you say, ‘into,’ it disappears.”

“Honestly, I didn’t see much of anything,” said Devon. “Turn up the brightness on your screen—and maybe clean it.”

TJ did so (minus the cleaning), and played the clip again. This time, they were able to make out the human figure that seemingly led Shane along to the horrifying cell before vanishing without a trace.

“Right, yeah, I see it,” said Shane. “That’s my shadow.”

“Don’t you try and start doing your little bullshit skeptic routine now, demon boy,” TJ warned.

“I’m not! It disappears because Mark was screwing around with his flashlight. And that is incredibly rude, just so you know.” 

“Mark said he wasn’t, but okay, fine. Watch what happens when you go inside and he stays out.”

TJ fast-forwarded the footage. The three of them watched as Shane walked eight times his normal speed up to the threshold of the Snake Den. On TJ’s command, the clip resumed as normal. And Mark had since turned his light back on.

Digital Shane edged into the cell, ducking low as a bat dive-bombed him from above. The blurry, distorted projection of his shadow on the grimy wall should have followed suit. Instead, it split in two.

“What the hell?” Devon breathed.

At first, Shane thought it may have been caused by the addition of another light source. That was how it looked. But suddenly, this new shadow—this clone—had its own autonomy. It did not move with him, or even like him. It was a different entity altogether. The physicality of its silhouetted body betrayed uncanny, unnatural movement; a contortion of true human behaviour. As Shane and his ‘real’ shadow slipped into the the dark cell, the shadow stayed where it stood. It appeared to glance around, surveying, scanning. Its head stopped roving when it spotted Mark. And though this shadow creature had no face, no eyes with which to see, Shane knew, intrinsically, that the shadow was staring at them down the barrel of the camera.

“Shit,” they heard Mark swear as his flashlight extinguished for the second time. The screen went black. Though their valiant cameraman could still be heard fumbling. Several seconds passed and the trio held a collective breath. The screen lit up again. This time, the frame was skewed until the camera wobbled back into place.

The shadow was gone.

TJ paused the clip. “I spoke to Mark after he showed me this. He never turned out his light. Not once. And it wasn’t a Maglite, either. So, seeing as this paranormal nonsense is apparently far more real than I first thought, I have to ask: what in the ever-loving fuck was that? What are you trying to do to us?”

“I already told you,” Shane replied evenly, “I’m not here to do anything to anyone. I’m here to try and clean up my shit and get you guys out of a pickle that you all had a hand in creating, by the way. So instead of an inquisition, how about a thank you.”

“We’re supposed to believe you? You with your freakish devil horns and your creepy-ass shadows.”

“TJ, come on,” Devon tried to interject as Shane gave an incredulous splutter, though even her confidence was audibly beginning to wane from unease.

“That wasn’t my shadow! My shadow is attached to me like everyone else’s, see?” He waved his hand in front of the wall. Sure enough, with some assistance from the filtered sunlight, his splayed fingers cast a carbon-copy silhouette. “There. Do I look like fucking Peter Pan to you?”

“No, you look like the Devil,” said TJ, and with venom piercing his every word he added, “and what’s to say you aren’t Him.”

Shane flicked his tongue over his lower lip, bristling. “If I was the Devil—the actual Devil—believe me, you would have figured it out long before now. If I was Him, I wouldn’t be sitting here taking your shit-talk, I would have smited—smited? Smote?”

“Smitten,” Devon supplied.

“I would have smitten you! And I wouldn’t be waiting, very patiently might I add, for you to understand that I don’t want to hurt you.” He looked at TJ, made sure the were seeing eye to eye. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Shane felt a ginger hand settle on his shoulder. He glanced to his side. Devon was there, giving him a thin but reassuring smile. She turned to TJ. “I believe him.”

TJ lifted his hands in a gesture of helpless disbelief and dropped them to his sides. “Really?”

“Listen, I’ve been sitting on this bombshell for a week now. It hasn’t gotten any less strange and yeah, parts of what I know terrify the crap out of me. But…”

“But what?” TJ prompted.

“He’s still Shane. Same as he always was. He’s still an annoying, infuriatingly cynical oddball…and deep down he’s still got a heart of gold. With or without the horns.”

“Aw.” Shane cracked a smile. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yeah.” She patted his shoulder. “Don’t get used to it.”

TJ glanced between the two of them as he scratched his bearded chin, consolidating his knowledge that the world as he knew it was likely to never be the same again. He exhaled and blew out his breath in a feeble whistle. “Alright. Fine. But if it wasn’t you, then what was the shadow?”

“A very good question,” Shane said brightly. “I don’t know.”

TJ blinked. “You what?”

“It’s a puzzler. But for real, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Dude. You’re a literal demon.”

Shane lifted a brow. “I’m aware.”

“ _How_ do you _not_ _know_?”

“Maybe because sometimes life throws you curve-balls, man!” Shane raised his hands in a shrug and turned from the computer. He proceeded to pace the floor at the foot of the bed furnishing Devon’s room. “I’ve seen spectres, FBAs, Earth-bound demons, the whole box and dice, but this is something different and I don’t know what; sue me.”

“It’s not like a shadow person?” asked Devon. “That’s a thing, right?”

“It is a shadow person in the most literal sense. But no, what you’re thinking of is a failed full-body apparition. It’s when a spirit can’t muster enough energy to materialise on the mortal plane. It happens more often than not. That’s where the myth, I guess you could call it, comes from.”

“Right.” Devon folded her arms and frowned. “I suppose the Ambassador must have had something to do with it.”

Shane paused. “Actually, I’m not so sure.”

Devon shot him a quizzical look from where she hovered by the computer.

“The Ambassador would have you think that he controls everything the dark touches. In reality, he only deals with the two Ds: Demons and the Dead. That’s his jurisdiction. And that thing was a shadow, not a shade.”

“So, where did it come from?” asked TJ.

Shane scratched the back of his head. “Look, all I know for certain is that, whatever it was, that thing wasn’t a part of me. It was using me. Maybe as a camouflage. That’s a, uh, fairly common occurrence among supernatural entities.” He shifted uncomfortably.

“And it _is_ a supernatural entity, isn’t it?” Devon reiterated.

“Undoubtedly. And it may be dangerous. But…” Shane trailed off as a sudden realisation occurred to him. “I don’t think it’s of diabolical origin.”

“Who is this Ambassador you keep mentioning?” asked TJ, derailing Shane’s train of thought and distracting Devon’s piqued curiosity.

“He’s my…” He paused, trying to think of a descriptor for the evil entity set on bringing Hell to the mortal world. “He’s my boss. And he wants me to finish what I set out to do.”

“Which is?”

“Essentially, crush Ryan’s dreams and destroy everything he’s worked for.”

“Oh. Sounds like a fun guy.”

“Yeah. But I’ve sort of gone rogue since then.”

TJ pressed his mouth into a frown of consideration, then lifted his chin in look of mild approval; the closest he had come to genuine acceptance thus far.

Two sharp raps on the door made the trio freeze on the spot. Shane could feel the blood drain from his face when it was Ryan’s voice that drifted through from the other side.

“Devon? Are you up? It’s almost nine and we have to check-out at ten.”

Devon looked at Shane with wide eyes. “Quick. Hide. —Yeah, just a second!”

Shane didn’t need to be told twice. He fled to the bathroom and locked the door behind him, just in time to hear Devon let Ryan in and greet him with false cheer.

“Oh, TJ’s here,” came Ryan’s muffled voice. “Have you seen Shane? He, like, bolted out of our room about fifteen minutes ago. I don’t know why; I was half-asleep.”

“Shane? Right! That’s right, he…uh…”

Shane pressed his face into the palm of his hand. Devon, while a fierce force to be reckoned with at times, couldn’t lie to save herself, let alone him. And Ryan…well, he had proven time and time again that his perceptiveness far exceeded that for which he was given credit.

_Just say I was sick,_ he willed, _that’s all you gotta do._

“He wasn’t feeling well,” TJ interjected as if having heard his silent plea. Shane breathed a small sigh of relief. “He said he was going for a quick walk. Something about the air, I think. These rooms are pretty old, after all, maybe mention it to reception on our way out.”

“Oh. That’s not good. Is he okay?”

The concern that coloured Ryan’s tone gave Shane pause. It tugged at a string in his chest. Sparked a curious flicker of warmth.

“Yes.” It was Devon who chimed in, her confidence bolstered by TJ’s simple-but-elegant lie. “He’ll be fine. Fresh air will clear him right up.”

“Yeah, probably.” A pause. A shuffle. “I hope so.”

Shane backed away from the door and leaned against the counter top of the washbasin. He glanced over his shoulder, into an identical mirror with an identical reflection to the one he had first seen that morning. As he did so, a knot of guilt twisted his stomach. Of course he wasn’t okay. Nothing about what was happening anymore was okay. He could tell himself that Ryan was one of his few close friends—nay, his closest friend. At the end of the day, he had still schemed and manipulated his way into the life of a person who had only ever offered him brotherhood and camaraderie. Their friendship had been founded on a web of lies. And though Shane was trying, desperately, to keep the strings from falling apart, he was beginning to realise that despite what nature intended, he was no such venomous spider; that, and he only had two hands.

Sure, their exchanges were rife with near-constant ribbing, a jibe here, a jab there, laughter to keep the long hours lively. But there was still care. Still concern. At least, that was what Shane had always felt. A large chunk of his existence revolved around making sure Ryan didn’t stumble into certain doom. Seldom had he thought the golden rule of reciprocity might apply to him as well—that Ryan gave a shit just as much as he did.

_You are too attached!_

Shane cringed at the flashbulb memory of the Ambassador back at the Embassy all those week ago. Had he listened? Had he headed the warning? 

_Nope. ‘Cause you didn’t think there would be consequences for your actions, you idiot. You never do._

Now, the question was not only whether Ryan could withstand the detonation of the truth-bomb between them, but whether he could as well.

Better yet, how was he going to leave the bathroom?

His latter ponderation was answered when he was given two knock’s warning before the door swung open.

“He’s gone,” said Devon. So Shane re-emerged and made a bee-line for the worn armchair in the corner of the room. Less than an hour into the day and he was already exhausted. “I think he’s worried about you,” she added.

“No shit,” grunted TJ. “By the sounds of it, you ran out of there like you were on fire.”

Shane felt his mouth curve into a smile. “For a second, I was worried that might become a possibility.”

“Well, you might want to start worrying again; if Ryan sees you like this, he’s probably gonna tie you to a pyre himself and we have a shoot today, remember?”

“Oh, no.” Devon clapped a hand to her cheek.

“Exactly,” said TJ.

Shane slumped, allowing his posture to conform with the crappy ergonomics of the armchair. What did scoliosis matter when the jig was up? It was game over. He wouldn’t even be able to leave the damn motel without being seen. Perhaps he was better off simply dragging himself back to Hell.

“Not so fast.” Devon’s direct interjection startled Shane out of his rumination. She had her phone in her hand, like she had just been looking at it. Of course, she had. “You’re not running away just yet.”

“Did I say I was?” Shane retorted a little too quickly.

“You’re thinking it, I can see it on your face.”

“Bullshit. You think I run from things? I don’t run, period. On a completely unrelated note, how much do you need the car?”

Devon rolled her eyes and walked over to her suitcase. She opened it and rifled through her belongings for a few seconds, then tossed a generic, slightly oversized purple beanie at him. “There. Put that on.”

Shane glanced from it to her. “You can’t be serious.”

“Dead-serious. Besides, it’s just until we get to Tombstone.”

Shane narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “And then what?”

“Then…” She crossed the room to show him the website open on the web-browser of her phone. “We get you to look the part.”

“Oh, damn.”

“I don’t think it would be hard to convince Ryan, either. In fact, he’s probably already one step ahead of us.”

“Plus,” added TJ, “you did mention you were into cosplay.”

Shane sighed through his nose. The things he put himself through… However, he had to admit, Devon’s plan was kind of genius. Even the beanie fit feasibly well when he tried it on, given his horns curled low against his head rather than jutting out in an outlandish fashion. There was a chance it just might work.

“Great!” said Devon. “Now there’s one thing left for us to do before we leave.” 

Shane exchanged a dubious glance with TJ. “What’s that?” he asked.

Devon grimaced. “We might need to get Mark up to speed.”


	6. The Haunted Town of Tombstone (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long! I hope you all don't think I've abandoned this story but personal issues have prevented me from getting this done. As such, this isn't the full chapter for Tombstone; it's going to be posted in parts. This is mostly so you don't have to wait as long inbetween updates while I work a little slower than I would like. Believe me, I'm doing as much as I am capable--it's frustrating me, too.
> 
> To those of you who have shown your support so far: THANK YOU! Comments, kudos, whatever. It all keeps me going.

Before he landed his job as a content producer for a multimillion-dollar media company, Shane had been an engineer. A good one. In Hell, that is.

When a soul refused to repent for the wrongs it had done on Earth, it was brought to the engineering department. In each case, Shane and his colleagues studied the remorseless soul to learn its secrets, what made it tick and, more importantly, what had sent it to Hell in the first place.

With this information, he helped fabricate a reality. One intended to play out over and again for the rest of eternity, tailored to each soul’s deep-seated guilt. One designed to torture. Some featured jilted lovers of the past while others showed heartbroken families. Where one took place in a school, another occurred behind the wheel of a car.

Endless and cyclical. Embellished yet rooted in terrible truth. These narratives shared at least one thing in common: they were called Hell-loops. Designed to work with the precision of finely tuned machines, when a Hell-loop was complete it was Shane’s job, along with the other engineers, to maintain it. They made sure nothing broke the soul’s belief in its own insidious existence.

But that was before.

 

Present day found Shane in a small shop along the main street of Tombstone, Arizona, outfitted in cow’s hide, boots, and (in his opinion) a rather fetching green bandana. It was a far cry from where he had started so long ago. From behind a rack of brown coats, he, Devon, and TJ kept eyes on their target: Mark.

The crew’s resident camera operator trundled the aisles of over-priced Old West costumes for hire, looking but not seeing, his movements limp and lifeless. He was missing the sharp awareness that gave him his even sharper wit. And unfortunately, Shane was sort of to blame. Earlier that day, before leaving their motel in Yuma, a chance phone-call had taken Ryan out of earshot. Shane, Devon, and TJ seized the opportunity to enlighten Mark as to the truth of his reality. Needless to say, their revelation did not go over well.

An unflappable, almost apathetic man, Mark seldom flinched in the shadows of long-abandoned asylums and grimy prisons. However, the very real nature of the supernatural was apparently well beyond what his rational brain could comprehend. When they had found out, Devon had been disturbed and TJ, shaken, but both had made an eventual recovery.

Not Mark.

His vacant mien and zombie-like shuffle did not promise to cure themselves any time soon. And it wouldn’t be long before Ryan noticed—if he hadn’t already.

Of course, Shane knew better than to try and approach Mark in such a fragile state. Still, he couldn’t help but feel that he had to interfere. It wasn’t that he thought he could help the situation—truly, he was the reason Mark looked like a clammy extra from _The Walking Dead_ —he just needed to know his cover wouldn’t be blown.

“I’m worried about him,” Devon whispered.

TJ shrugged. “What else can we do? We gave it to him straight. We explained the footage he showed us. We even proved we weren’t being possessed by Horny McHorn-Face here.”

Shane shook his head to himself. “Hurtful. But the lack of effort you put into that burn is what really offends me.”

“I know, we did what we could,” said Devon, ignoring their play-ground insults, “I just don’t think he’s handling it very well.”

TJ barked a humourless laugh. “Of course he’s not!”

“Quiet,” said Shane through gritted teeth. He glanced at the cubicle where Ryan was inside trying on costumes. It wasn’t sound-proof by any means.

“I’m not even sure if I’m handling it well,” TJ continued, “and I only found out ten minutes before he did. I’m dealing with it, or trying to. I’m definitely gonna need a stiff drink by the end of the day, I’ll tell you that. But geez, he just found out the world as he knows it is a steaming pile of bullshit. Somewhere out there, a bunch of evil, soul-sucking demons are spying on our every move to determine who earns enough brownie points to get into Heaven, or wherever you go when you’re not being tossed into a pit of molten lava. That’s pretty fucking hard to handle!”

“Would you shut up?!” Shane hissed. He aimed what he hoped was his most stern look at TJ—though there was a chance the brimmed hat hiding his horns undermined his severity. “I know you’re a little freaked out. But do you think maybe you could try not screaming it out for whole of the American west to hear? Ryan still doesn’t know and I would like to keep it that way, thank you.”

TJ curled his lip in defence. “I’m not screaming. I’d just like to know why we had to tell Mark.”

Shane crossed his arms and averted his gaze. “I thought it would be better this way. If I told him on my own terms rather than let him find out by accident, then we wouldn’t have to sneak around behind his back. It was supposed to be a win-win.”

“Maybe it would have been better to let him put the pieces together himself,” Devon mused.

“Maybe,” Shane agreed, “but who knows how long that would have taken? Time is not a luxury we can afford right now. The Ambassador is getting cocky. Well, cocki _er_ ”

“And what exactly do you think he’s gonna do?” asked TJ.

“I have no idea. He could come after me. He could go after Ryan. All I know is that it’s not gonna be good.”

The door to the changing cubicle clattered open and out sauntered Ryan, clad head to toe like a rootin’, tootin’, sharp-shootin’ cowboy straight out of an old Clint Eastwood movie. Shane, Devon and TJ clamped their mouths shut and abandoned their conversation.

“Oh, man.” Shane grinned. “That looks sick.”

“I got my best bib and tucker on, so how’s about we show these hang-around ghouls we ain’t no city-slickers,” Ryan declared in a rough southern drawl that in no way matched the beam on his face. Behind the front counter, the sales assistant rolled her eyes.

“Did you Google that while you were in there?” Shane asked.

Ryan laughed. In the next instant, his face darkened and his smile disappeared. He drew a gleaming gun from the holster strapped to his belt and aimed it between Shane’s eyes. “Pull in your horns and mind your own business, or you’re gonna be waking up the wrong passenger.”

Shane froze as his stomach dropped into his shoes. He watched in horror and dismay as Ryan’s face pulled in a snarl of rage—no; hatred. Adrenaline prickled through his veins. His pulse thundered in his ears. As his mind raced, Shane stared down the barrel of Ryan’s gun and eyed the one finger perilously close to the trigger.

Ryan knew.

He knew the whole ugly truth. But how? He couldn’t. Or had Mark somehow run and betrayed them already?

“Wh—what’s that now, buddy?” Shane asked weakly, coughing a little as he cleared his throat.

“Pull in your horns,” Ryan repeated, his smile returning, then faltering as he realised something was amiss. The revolver—the plastic, toy revolver—dropped to his side. “Uh, ‘Back off, or you’ll be messing with the wrong person.’ I was just getting into character. Jesus, are you okay?”

Shane could feel the feel sweat beading on his forehead. His knees had turned to jelly. It was a toy gun. A stupid toy. Why had it looked so real? And Ryan’s face…

_You are too attached!_

“Right!” Shane exclaimed. “Of course, I misheard, I thought you said corns. As in corns…on…on your feet. Which would have been weird because I found some corns. On my feet. Yesterday. All this walking around… Never mind!” To break the tension, he slapped TJ on the arm with a hearty chuckle. TJ responded with a forced laugh that barely veiled his bewilderment.

Ryan, meanwhile, blinked in confusion. “Okay. Weird energy coming off you right now. I’m gonna go over here—see if these boots come with any sweet spurs. TJ, make sure he doesn’t lose whatever marbles he’s got left.”

“Excuse you, I got plenty of marbles. A whole bag of marbles. Enough to play the game, Marbles, so you can spur yourself, sir,” Shane called. Ryan hummed an acknowledgement and walked off to where the shoe-racks stood near the back of the store.

As soon as Ryan’s back was turned, Devon rounded on Shane. “Corns? Did you have an aneurysm?”

“Oh, because you’re so perfect under pressure.”

“What happened?”

What indeed. Shane had seen the _moment_ , was what happened. The moment Ryan realised he had befriended and trusted something he believed with every fibre of his being was a monster. What Shane had seen was utter betrayal after years of lies; a quick, remorseless end with a bullet from his best friend that would tear through his mortal flesh and send him straight back to Hell. Everything he feared about Ryan knowing the truth condensed into a few short seconds, twisted beyond reality by his own imagination.

“I dunno, that was weird, right?” Shane replied shakily.

“More than weird,” said TJ, “you completely wigged out— Hold up, where’s Mark going?”

While they were distracted, their catatonic cameraman must have made peace—or war—with his maker. His face, once vacant, was now fixed in determination as he set a marching pace down the aisles. He headed straight for the front door.

“Mark,” Devon called as she ran after him. Hangers and their garments dropped to the floor, knocked loose by her whirlwind passing. “Mark, what’s going on?”

Mark halted, reluctance bowing his shoulders as he turned to face them. “I can’t stay anymore,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked TJ.

“This…” Mark gestured around himself. “This is nuts. Knowing what I know, how am I supposed to pretend everything is normal? This whole thing you’re doing is for Ryan, you say Ryan’s not supposed to find out. What about me? Did you not consider maybe I had a right not to know? I was never supposed to find out anything about who you really are,” he said to Shane, “let alone the stuff about your boss or your mission. Ghosts, demons, Hell…until this morning, none of it was real and that was fine by me.”

“Well, it was always real. You just didn’t…” Shane trailed off as Mark began laughing quietly to himself. 

“You know what I used to be afraid of? Squatters. And whether my annual bonus would come through before my rate notice did. Media’s not an easy industry to break into and I have bills to pay. But, apparently, that’s not all I have to worry about, because this whole time I’ve been dicing with death for a few measly clicks online. That’s whacked, man.”

Shane drew a breath to argue back.

Instead, it caught in his throat.

“You know what? You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Shane scrubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t consider you. I never even gave you a choice. I should have. But I didn’t. Devon and TJ found out by accident but you…you didn’t have to know. At least not yet.” Shane sighed. “It was selfish and I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair.”

“No,” Mark agreed, “it wasn’t.”

“In my defence, it was Devon’s idea—”

“Hey!”

“—but we could still use your help. If you’re willing.”

Mark looked to his feet with a small shake of his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve thought about it and—”

“No,” Devon interrupted. “No, we have come too far for you to throw the towel in now.” She looked around and spotted the costumes she had displaced strewn across the aisle. “Here.” Picking them apart, there was one women’s ensemble and one men’s. She held them up triumphantly. “What you need is a distraction.”

“Holy crap, Devon, you guys should dress up too, that would be awesome.”

Devon squeaked and started in surprise. She whirled around to see Ryan had appeared behind them, seemingly out of nowhere, his spurs in hand. “Oh, Ryan, there you are. You—you think so?”

“Yeah, don’t let me and Shane have all the fun. Here, we’ll find ones for all of you.”

Mark took a deep breath as he fished his phone out of his pocket to punch in a number. “Actually, don’t bother.”

Ryan’s face fell, his boyish glee suddenly gone. “Alright. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I just thought since we’re here…”

“No, I mean I’m not staying. I can’t. I have to go back to L.A..”

“Wait, what?” Ryan looked to Mark, then each of them as he tried to read the situation.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Shane.

“I’m sure,” said Mark.

“What are you talking about? We have a shoot. You’re on the call sheet, you can’t just leave,” said Ryan.

“I know, and I wouldn’t if I didn’t think it was necessary but something’s come up. Family emergency.”

“Shit.” Ryan removed his hat. “Is everyone okay?”

Mark looked at Shane. “I don’t know yet. I guess I’ll find out soon. If anything changes, Ry, I’ll keep you posted. Promise.” As he turned to walk away, he cast one last glance over his shoulder. To bafflement of the group, he threw TJ his car keys. “Well, I’m not about to leave you stranded in the desert.”

While TJ’s mouth hung agape, Ryan asked, “How are you going to get home?”

“I’ll catch a Greyhound, there’s a station a block away and a bus leaving in forty-five minutes. Don’t worry about me. Just…take care of the car. And yourselves. Please.”

With that, Mark left. The last glimpse of him shimmered, washed-out by the sun at high noon as the splotchy glass door swung shut behind him.

“Alright,” Ryan said stiffly, breaking the stunned silence, “does anyone else have a bombshell they wanna drop?”

Shane, Devon and TJ exchanged panicked glances.

“Nope.”

“Nothing.”

“Absolutely not.”

With arms akimbo, Ryan nodded. “Great. So, what now?”

“I’ll stand in for Mark today,” TJ answered. “I can AD from behind the camera. It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Devon agreed. She was still gazing at the door, costumes hung in her limp hands. “It’ll be fine.” Suddenly, she blinked and snapped back to attention. “In the meantime, get your boots on Teej, I think there’s a ‘Wanted’ poster with our names on it.”

“No, no, wait—” TJ had no time to protest before Devon flung a costume into his arms and marched over to the change rooms with one of her own. Ruffles and skirts billowed out behind her in clouds of pink and crimson.

A few minutes later, Devon emerged in a dress that flared at the hem and a broad sunhat that resembled an upside-down satellite dish. TJ followed close behind in an ensemble like Ryan’s. Except TJ had a shotgun.

“I gotta have one of those,” said Shane.

At the back of the store, adjacent to the shelves of shoes, hats, and belts, there was a door that led through to the neighbouring property; one of Tombstone’s many saloons. Though it wasn’t operative for service, it was used as a set for photographs. And Ryan was of the opinion they needed a souvenir. Upon bar stools, Ryan, Devon, TJ, and Shane arranged themselves in various poses and brandished their chosen weapons for the camera. Shane, with a gun under his arm, raised a glass of whiskey as the lightbulb flashed. His own silent toast. To friendship. To duty. To what he felt in his bones was bearing down on them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may wonder why I’ve chosen to have Mark excuse himself from this chapter. Turns out, according to the credits, he wasn’t the camera operator for the Tombstone episode; TJ was. Suspicious? Ha. Not really. But I’m up for the challenge of making everything I write fit in with what I’ve observed. He will be back for the chapter on the “Haunting of Hannah Williams” episode, from what I’ve gathered.
> 
> Also, that photo at the end there exists. If you haven't seen it, check out Ryan's instagram. It's pretty great.


	7. The Haunted Town of Tombstone (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still going slow. Working with what I've got. Things with pick up speed next update. I'm still feeling the love though, so thank you.

“Well, Shane, this is a pretty big moment for me. I have always been a fan of Old West history, and right now we are actually on the exact spot where the infamous shoot out at the O.K. Corral happened. That’s uh…pretty crazy.”

Ryan wove his way between the tableau of silhouettes; gunslingers with pistols drawn, shooting to kill, frozen in time. Shane sauntered behind, feeling quite the bandit when the cool night wind blew through the valley and sent his long, tawny coat rippling. Silently, TJ captured the dusky, starlit scene on camera. With a woman from the Tombstone trust at her side, Devon observed her small company with eagle eyes.

“We’re walking through history right now,” Shane agreed, a notion that appealed to the ancient annalist in him.

“I mean, look at this.” Ryan gestured to the statues. “This is the exact positioning. This is based off of Wyatt Earp’s sketch.”

Shane schooled his amusement into an expression of mild intrigue. It was very likely that the artist’s impression before them was _not_ exact in the slightest. Wyatt Earp wasn’t gifted with a brush or pencil, so Shane had heard. But he kept his cynicism to himself. There was no need to spoil Ryan’s fun when he was the only one of their party still in high spirits.

Mark’s sudden departure had left them all ill at ease, but not knowing the full truth meant Ryan soon accepted Mark’s boldfaced lie. Improvise and adapt; that was how he had learned to survive in the cut-throat L.A. job market and that was the philosophy he fell back on now. Instead, it was Devon and TJ, long changed out of their frivolous costumes, who had grown sombre and restless with a certain flightiness to their shifting eyes. They didn’t have the luxury of ignorance. Yet, they got on with the tasks at hand; liaising with site managers, planing movements and angles. Business as usual did not slow for unexpected turbulence. But their confidence was bruised and Shane was left to hope against hope that his crew still held a morsel of trust in him to captain their ship, especially as it drifted ever-closer to murky, unfathomable waters.

The only thing left unscathed was Ryan’s enthusiasm. For the rest of the afternoon, Shane had watched his friend’s excitement build; an effervescent fizz that escaped in jittery shuffles, rambled factoids and bubbles of laughter as Ryan assumed the role of director. Optimism, wonder—call it what you will. It was refreshing. Infectious. And so very human. It reminded Shane of why he had accepted a mortal-world mission in the first place—and defied every order the embassy had sent him thereafter.

With the sun having dipped below the horizon, the sky was awash in an other-worldly, green teal that faded up into the velvet-blue night. The stratosphere arced in an endless dome above, a canvas only the stars could paint. Below, the old settlement crouched in a darkened, dust-swept valley, where chirping insects filled the soundscape, accompanied by the sighs of old weather boards shrinking in the absence of scorching heat. Midnight in the desert. It was a lonely kind of peace, Shane thought. Tranquil in a melancholy way.

At least, it was until Ryan pulled out the spirit box.

Shane fought back a groan. A means to unravel the mystery shrouding the O.K. Corral shootout it may have been but as far as he was concerned, nothing could justify subjecting both living and dead to its jarring, incessant horse-shit. However, with the streets abuzz with the most activity he’d seen in weeks, for once Shane found he could be a shade more tolerant, if it meant finally getting some damning evidence. So, they began, projecting their voices above the static _ch-ch-ch_ of the wretched contraption to their audience of statues.

“Alright. My name’s Ryan.”

“I’m Shane.”

“And we’re just here to find out what happened. There’s lots of different tellings of how this went down. We want to find out the truth.” Ryan glanced around patiently, eyeing the faces painted in hard glares. Lifeless though they were, anyone would attest there was still something unnerving about those agents of the uncanny valley.

Shane, on the other hand, was a little more interested in the other lifeless figures surrounding them. Spirits. The ancient dead.

Oh, they were there, alright. Granted, it was hardly springtime at the county fair but faded spectres still swanned by in dribs and drabs, roaming the night streets, having emerged as the sun went down. There were four of them wandering the O.K. Corral’s back lot that very moment. A scruffy, old prospector with a beard and tobacco-stained teeth shuffled along the back wall. He passed straight through to the street outside when he reached the lot boundary. That left three. A man and woman—a couple, Shane supposed—donning their day apparel and loitering by the corral’s back door. They stood side by side, paused to observe the strangers in their midst. And then there was…

No. Not a shade. A shadow. A pitch figure encompassed by moonlight that darted across the plane of the corrugated fence on the other side of the lot.

A shadow man.

Shane blinked and narrowed his eyes. The shadow paused for a moment, so Ryan was directly between them. It peered over his shoulder.  Stared. Shane felt the breath leave his lungs.

“Ryan.”

“What?” Ryan looked up from the spirit box. To tell or not to tell…

“Move your head out of the way for a second.”

“Huh? What are you…?”

Having seen something was awry, Ryan’s face morphed from quizzical to alarmed as he turned away from the re-enactment pen. But the shadow had no intentions of lingering. With the precision of a dancer, it moved the same time Ryan did and ducked out of sight, into the slant of shade cast by the adjacent fence.

Gone without a trace.

“What?” Ryan demanded again when he found nothing.

Shane mentally kicked himself for not keeping his mouth shut. He shouldn’t have said anything. Not when he was so uncertain about the nature of their stalkers. Then again, he could have stayed silent. Left Ryan with no chance in Hell of witnessing the strange phenomenon. Neither choice sat well, even in hindsight. At least this way Shane could kid himself that he had _tried_ to act in the name of the greater good; that he wasn’t secretly relieved to let himself off the hook one more time when no harm meant no foul.

“Nothing, nothing. Just a giant moth was flappin’ around your head there.”

“A moth?” Ryan started, the reflex of a perpetually nervous man, but immediately composed himself and regarded Shane, deadpan. He rose a suspicious brow. “You look pretty concerned about a bug—concerned for someone who’s incapable of registering fear as an emotion.” Nevertheless, he stole an uneasy glance behind him again, scanning the dark for rogue flying insects. Among other things.

“It was huge. I thought it was about to take a chomp out of your ear.”

“Yeah? Well, a big, ol’ bite of the Bergmeister, I reckon it would have bitten off more than it could chew.”

“Probably.”

They shared a brief laugh, but then Ryan tilted his head in a way that unnerved Shane. Reminded him of how acute his friend’s perceptions could be. “You sure that’s all you saw?”

“I’m pretty sure.” Shane chuckled, internally cringing at how forced it sounded. “What else would it be? An orb? One of your funny little specks of dust? Look around, Ryan, there’s dust everywhere.”

 _“Duuh it couldn’t be an orb, there’s dust everywhere,_ ” Ryan mocked in his dopey ‘Shane’ impression. “Even if you saw a bonafide FBA, you would never give me the satisfaction of being right. Especially if my back was turned.”

“Please,” Shane scoffed.

“What about you guys?” Ryan asked turning to TJ and Devon. “Did you see this ‘moth’, whatever it was?”

Devon appeared to freeze for a split second. She usually did when called upon while the camera was still rolling, preferring to shy away from the spotlight. But there was an uncharacteristic uncertainty in the fidgeting of her feet. A startled wideness to her eyes. Fear. She had seen the shadow man.

“I don’t know,” Devon replied. “I was—I was checking my phone.”

“Sure.” Ryan placed his hands on his hips, appearing to accept her excuse. But Shane didn’t delude himself for a second in thinking that Ryan had dismissed one tiny detail: that Devon’s phone was in her back pocket, nowhere near her hands. “TJ?” he prompted.

“I was behind you, man,” said TJ, negating the possibility that either he or the camera had borne witness. Though he did look over his shoulder, possibly for the first time in his life, when the wind buffeted the creaky hanging sign over the back door of the corral.

Ryan shook his head to himself. “Jenny, what do you make of all this?”

The woman from the Tombstone trust started, having zoned out of their conversation as it circled tediously. But she snapped back into character, truly a tour guide who cared—for revenue, return-business and a good review on Yelp.

“Oh, you never can tell what you’re going to get out here, especially after dark. I can’t say I saw anything out of the ordinary…perhaps I wasn’t supposed to. I’ve had plenty of people claim they’ve had encounters with some of our resident spirits, but spirits themselves tend to have their own agenda. They like to create a bit of unrest. They can play favourites. All you can do is keep your ears, eyes and mind open.”

Shane could have rolled his eyes.

“Thank you, Jenny, that was very…cryptic. Alright, fine. You can have this one,” Ryan said to Shane, folding his arms. “I would never expect you to just offer up solid evidence anyway. That would be too sporting for you, I think.”

As much as his indignation prickled, Shane refrained from arguing back. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell Ryan about the shadow and its brethren. He just wanted to know _what fuck it actually was_ first. But that wasn’t going to happen.

So instead, he played along with the bit.

“What’d I tell you? I’m Dirty Shane. A dirty scoundrel, that’s what you get.”

“Lucky me. I just hope my pals here will find it in themselves to be a little more forthcoming.” Ryan turned to the statue nearest him. “If any of you fellas wanna tell us what actually happened here, particularly Billy, Frank and Tom, please let us know now. How did you die?”

The grating pulse of white-noise had done a decent job of setting Shane’s teeth on edge until that point. The (admittedly fair) accusation from Ryan had only added to his frustrations. But it was the shared amusement on the ghosts’ faces, still silently observing as Ryan posed his questions, that really chapped his nips. They knew the McLaurys were not present. Nor the Earps for that matter. They knew Ryan’s efforts were fruitless as certainly as Shane did. But that didn’t make Ryan, speaking for all intents and purposes to himself, as daft as he looked. There _were_ spirits present. Specifically, the snickering pair. But they clearly were not going to fill the dead air themselves. And Shane was in no position deal out the reprimand he felt they deserved, not without giving himself away. All he could do was offer a little encouragement.

“This goes out to anyone,” Shane said, piquing the interest of Devon and TJ. “ _Anyone_ out there who could shed some light on the day these streets ran red with the blood of their men.”

“Jesus,” Ryan muttered. “Uh, please excuse my friend’s zeal but he’s right. I’m not picky. I’ll talk to anyone, I’m a social guy. More than that, I’m very open minded and would be happy to hear all accounts. Perhaps one or more of these men were your friends. Maybe you hated their guts, I don’t know—but I’d like to. This is a safe space so feel free to air your dirty laundry.”

“Let it all hang out.”

“Alright, maybe don’t let it _all_ hang out.”

“But think very carefully if you want to pass up this opportunity!” Shane adjusted his hat by the rim, eyeing the ghosts intently, making sure they were watching. “This golden opportunity to say your piece.”

The ghosts’ expressions sobered. If they had failed to cotton on to who and what Shane was initially, they appeared to have remedied that oversight since. They muttered between themselves as if in debate, uncertain, inaudible.

Then, the gent lifted his walking stick and pointed towards the south of the main street. In a thick, almost drunken drawl, he said, “If you really want to find the Earps, you head on down to ‘The Grand’. But don’t let slip that we sent you.” The woman on his arm nodded in agreement as she fiddled with the ruffles on the cuff of her sleeve.

So, they were willing to talk. The Ghoul Boys finally had some cooperative ghouls in their midst. Shane could have laughed in triumph.

…Until he realised the spirit box had relayed nothing to his oblivious mortal companions.

“What the Hell?” Shane hissed, so low under his breath he himself could barely hear it.

“He means The Grand Hotel,” the ghostly woman explained, oblivious to Shane’s plight as she adjusted her bustle. “But if you do happen to mosey on into Morgan or Virgil Earp, y’all’d best be keeping your wits about you.”

Whole. Goddamn. Sentences. That stupid, useless, glorified radio scanner was missing all of it. For two years, it had been one sentence away from thrusting Shane into an untimely doxing. And now it had the audacity to not work?

“Is this thing broken?” Shane growled with a sharp, impatient gesture to the chattering box. “We’re getting bupkis with that.”

Ryan shrugged. “We got _some_ stuff.”

But not enough.

Nothing beyond creaks and groans so easily debunked.

Nothing that compared to an actual conversation.

Shane’s hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. Through gritted teeth he said, “As much as I hate the spirit box, I hate it even more when nothing happens.”

Ryan gave him a smug look. “This just goes back to what I was saying, that not every site is gonna be active. If it was radio channels like you suggested it would be talking all the time, wouldn’t it?”

Oh, but this site was indeed active. The spirit box told nothing but lies. And Shane was struggling to contain the rage and exasperation that simmered beneath his cool demeanour.

“Is it killing you right now?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah. A little bit.”

As they continued riffing and filling the minutes before they could shut down the spirit box and truly call it quits, Devon caught Shane’s eye with urgent questions written plain on her face. Shane replied with a look that he hoped would suffice. _Later_. Later he would explain. For the minute, he needed her and TJ to follow his lead.

“Well folks, I think we’ve had our fun here,” Ryan announced. “Clearly none of you wanted to talk to us. That’s fine. I got to stand in history and that’s enough for me. Maybe I’ll find something later. Maybe not. I won’t say I’m not disappointed.”

“This was enough for you?” Shane asked, incredulous.

“Hey, I’m always on the lookout for some ghouls. But today? Today I made little Ryan very happy.”

Shane screwed his mouth shut in a grimace of mock disgust. “Nope. Didn’t like that.”

“I just mean a boyhood dream of mine came true. And the best part is that it’s not even over yet. Because we still have—”

“Yes! The Grand Hotel, I believe.”

Ryan paused. Devon, TJ, and even Jenny seemed momentarily confused.

“That is one of the places we’re stopping off, right?” Shane asked, his gusto plummeting.

“Not…exactly,” said Ryan. “We’re going to Big Nose Kate’s which was formerly the site of The Grand Hotel—did you snoop around in my notes? Damn it, Shane, the whole point of you not knowing is to try and preserve the authenticity of the shoot.”

“I didn’t snoop. I, uh, already knew about ‘The Grand’, as they say. Real historical gem.”

Ryan folded his arms but seemed somewhat satisfied. Shane was a known history buff. This was all still on brand for him—thank the Lord in Hell.

Shane chanced a glance over to the ghosts by the door. A discrete quirk of his mouth was all the thanks he could give for their tip. They nodded in reply and with the show apparently over, made to leave. The gent slipped away, without a word. The woman stopped to give Shane one final regard before she followed suit.

“Don’t thank us just yet,” she said and vanished through the corral’s closed backdoor. 


End file.
